Seven people were murdered and another seven wounded in a drive-by in Santa Barbara by a deeply disturbed MRA/PUA. He considered himself a frustrated Alpha Male who was owed sex by women, and when he couldn’t get it, he decided to punish random women. Dave Futrelle has a complete transcript of his manifesto, along with the video he made (the video may disappear; youtube has been busy deleting copies).
Hi, Elliot Rodger here.
Well… this is my last video. It all has to come to this.
Tomorrow is the day of retribution. The day in which I will have my revenge against humanity. Against all of you.
For the last 8 years of my life, ever since I’ve hit puberty, I’ve been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection, and unfulfilled desires. All because girls have never been attracted to me.
Girls gave their affection, and sex, and love, to other men but never to me.
I’m 22 years old and I’m still a virgin. I’ve never even kissed a girl.
I’ve been through college for two and a half years, more than that actually, and I’m still a virgin.
It has been very torturous.
College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex, and fun, and pleasure. But in those years I’ve had to rot in loneliness.
It’s not fair. You girls have never been attracted to me.
I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it.
It’s an injustice, a crime, because I don’t know what you don’t see in me. I’m the perfect guy, and yet you throw yourselves at all these obnoxious men, instead of me, the supreme gentlemen.
I will punish all of you for it. (laughs)
On the day of retribution I am going to enter the hottest sorority house of UCSB… and I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blonde slut I see inside there.
All those girls that I’ve desired so much, they would’ve all rejected me and looked down upon me as an inferior man if I ever made a sexual advance towards them while they throw themselves at these obnoxious brutes.
I will take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you.
You will finally see that I am in truth the superior one. The true alpha male. (laughs)
Yes, after I’ve annihilated every single girl in the sorority house, I’ll take to the streets of Isla Vista, and slay every single person I see there.
All those popular kids who live such lives of hedonistic pleasure while I’ve had to rot in loneliness for all these years, they’ve all looked down upon me every time I try to go out and join them. They’ve all treated me like a mouse.
Well now, I will be a God compared to you. You will all be animals. You are animals, and I will slaughter you like animals. I will be a God, exacting my retribution, on all those who deserve it.
And you do deserve it, just for the crime of living a better life than me.
All you popular kids. You’ve never accepted me, and now you’ll all pay for it.
And girls, all I’ve ever wanted was to love you, and to be loved by you. I’ve wanted a girlfriend, I’ve wanted sex, I’ve wanted love, affection, adoration, but you think I’m unworthy of it.
That’s a crime that can never be forgiven.
If I can’t have you, girls, I will destroy you. (laughs)
You denied me a happy life, and in turn, I will deny all of you life. (laughs) It’s only fair.
I hate all of you, humanity is a disgusting, wretched, depraved species. If I had it in my power, I would stop at nothing, to reduce every single one of you to mountains of skulls and rivers of blood, and rightfully so.
You deserve to be annihilated. And I’ll give that to you.
You never showed me any mercy, and so I will show you none. (laughs)
You force me to suffer all my life, and now I’ll make you all suffer.
I’ve waited a long time for this.
I’ll give you exactly what you deserve.
You know, I think I kind of understand why women wanted nothing to do with this guy.
It doesn’t help that this severely mentally disturbed individual was feeding on a steady diet of the misogyny pouring out of various so-called “men’s rights” channels and websites.
Or you’re a rotten blackjack player, the type who won’t stand with a 20.
ooh, that’s good.
Do you… do you not see the blatant non sequitur in that? Really?
Please tell me you do, and you just made a mistake.
You’ll note the latter is not, by any measure, a right to sexual contact. It is a right to, if you’re able, purchase sexual contact from a willing person for a price they choose. It’s similar to one’s right to buy a new furniture set for one’s living room.
@316
This is quite right. I think much, or at least a good bit, of the psychological power of Christianity comes from the ability of its basically sex-negative message to take a little of the sting out of not having sex with anybody. It is not a substitute for a relationship, but a depressed lonely person would do better with Christianity than pickling themselves in MRA-PUA bitterness. If we want to oppose Christianity, then we should have some alternate social and philosophical perspective to provide such a benefit.
How many times have people basically prefaced a reply to neuroguy with “I hope this is a mistake”. In this thread. Alone.
Your words are a mere CTRL+F away. I have brazenly cut and pasted them.
You didn’t say women in particular.
neuroguy # 247
Bolding mine. I will give you a free lesson on attraction skills. Nobody owes you anything in the social department. Be a nice person. Genuinely care about people. Be open and friendly, especially to any romantic interests. Go to community events. Join an activity club and meet people on a platonic basis. Do not be the lecher who is only there for sexual purposes. Be cool, make friends, and people will automatically try to match you up with their single friends. Avoid at all costs talking about how sex is a right.
The same guidelines apply to casual sexual encounters, minus the lecher tip.
Neuroguy and his ilk are stuck on this idea that this was a case of a horny guy denied his ‘right’ to get laid. Because women are too picky, or too prudish, or whatthefuckever.
That’s the disconnect, right there.
This isn’t a case of a ‘horny guy’ denied his ‘right to get laid’.
This is an abuser who couldn’t find someone willing to be abused.
Seriously, do you really think that if a woman had agreed to go out with him that he’d have treated her well? He’d have treated her like a queen, right? Him and Henry VIII.
It’s not a *right*.
It’s a freedom to get yourself a furniture set. It’s a freedom to have sex, even when money is paid for it.
It’s not a “right” to sexual contact or even a “right” to sexual contract.
—–Bolding mine. I will give you a free lesson on attraction skills. Nobody owes you anything in the social department. Be a nice person. Genuinely care about people. Be open and friendly, especially to any romantic interests. Go to community events. Join an activity club and meet people on a platonic basis. Do not be the lecher who is only there for sexual purposes. Be cool, make friends, and people will automatically try to match you up with their single friends. Avoid at all costs talking about how sex is a right. —-
But but but but but… that’s like, hard. It requires effort. It requires seeing others as people rather than gamepieces that exist for your personal amusement.
neuroguy,
You want these legal rights and protections for sex workers to include a legally binding contract between sex worker and client. Is that not so?
Yet in all the jurisdictions I know of a contract can only be legally binding where both, or all, parties are fully free to enter into it or not to enter into it, as they see fit. You have nowhere explained how this law of contract can operate in situations where in extremis your right to sexual contact would be enforceable against an unwilling sex worker. Nor, indeed, how that would not be rape.
Your goalposts are now wrapped around your neck. Where do we go from here?
Showering her hair with sun glints off the most expensive, exquisitely fashioned metals.
:puke:
neuroguy @ general:
If someone has a right to sex, and you refuse them sex, you are violating that right. Have you personally ever refused anyone sex?
If so, how should you be held accountable?
Or do people only have a right to have sex with people who aren’t you?
Am I also the only person getting the kind of disturbing hints of “thought experiments” that often go hand in hand with other pretty heinous concepts, from neuroguy?
What would a “right to sexual contact” look like, legally? Because that’s how we enshrine rights, by legislating in such a way that they can happen unimpeded by any law. Put another way, how is it that we don’t have that right already? Sodomy isn’t illegal any more. Premarital sex isn’t illegal any more. I guess adultery is still grounds for divorce, but you can’t get arrested or fined for doing it. The only types of sexual contact that are prohibited by law are those involving minors and corpses, which by definition can’t give consent. Even incest as an act isn’t illegal. So what more do you want, neuroguy, when you say “right to sexual contact”? If you’re only talking about prostitution, it’s still legal to have sex with a prostitute (you just can’t pay for it, they have to want to have sex with you).
Perhaps I’m missing something. I’m assuming that you meant to reference section 4 (Rights and Freedom) of the document to which you linked, specifically this part:
“Most rights entitle their holders to freedom in some sense; indeed holding a right can entail that one is free in one or more of a variety of senses. In the most general terms, the active incidents—the privilege and the power—entitle their holders to freedom to act in certain ways. The passive incidents—the claim and the immunity—often entitle their holders to freedom from undesirable actions or states.
We can be more specific. A privilege-right makes it holder “free to” in the sense of non-forbiddenness. A government employee with a security clearance, for instance, has a privilege-right that makes him free to read classified documents. One can be free in this non-forbidden way without having the physical ability to do what one is free to do. You may be free to march in the parade, even when both your knees are sprained. The actions you are free to do in this sense may or may not be possible for you, but at least they are not disallowed.”
That, to me, is clearly what I was trying to discuss (one’s right/freedom to purchase an object or service), but it’s described as a right that confers a freedom. I think “right to sexual freedom” covers the matter well, and makes the issue clear.
@Tashiliciously Shriked:
Hrm. Not from me.
Really, I think after reading everything he’s said (and why did I read absolutely everything he said? That’s another question.) that he’s asserting that there is a **freedom** to sex, but simply doesn’t realize that he’s backed off from his original “right” to sex and hasn’t changed his language. I think he’s already convinced that you can’t guarantee sex to anyone (his “less than 100%” comment somewhere between 450 & 500 in this thread). But as his words haven’t changed, we can’t **know** that his position has changed. I’m pretty sure it has, but I totally get why others think it hasn’t, given that he hasn’t changed his language.
But in any case, the disturbing “thought experiments” are those in which someone is all, “but hypothetically, if you didn’t have any rights, that would be awesome!” or “but can I violate your rights if X is true?” He takes the position that violating women’s right to bodily autonomy is bad, he just isn’t seeing how his language logically entails violating that right.
@Jacob Schmidt:
Fair enough.
and gets really abusively defensive when it gets repeatedly pointed out.
Let me be clear on three things:
1) I firmly believe that women have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies, no exception.
2) I firmly believe that men are owed nothing.
3) I dislike the “PUA community” with a passion.
@Jacob Schmidt #321
“I think this is the wrong answer here. The answer should be, “People who feel willing and able to help.””
Yes and no.
As @Rowan vet-tech #226 pointed out, her attempt at helping backfired badly.
If you are desperate, you need to be able to look up at someone who is living proof that it can be done.
This is why so many fall for the “PUA community”: because it seems real, it seems achievable, it seems like something that actually works.
“your description of this “fringe” group is (at least by me, and I’m guessing by most everyone here) seen as a contradiction.”
I can go with that. I loathe the term “PUA” myself.
While still being far from feminism, the “fringe” I talked about are usually despised by the rest of the community (which is a good sign).
@ludicrous #324
Thanks but please please please oh please don’t call me PUA.
I did a lot of PUA-like things and I am utterly ashamed of it.
The “fringe” ideas were rather simple: let go of your ego, be bold, be friendly and open, do not lie, do not manipulate, work on being your best self and appreciate women whether they sleep with you or not, they are not a trophy.
I still don’t think that this is enough, but it’s *heaps* better than what goes around in the rest of the community.
Most people in this thread would regard these as obvious things that any healthy compassionate human should know already.
But we are not talking about healthy humans here.
THIS STUFF WAS NOT OBVIOUS TO ME.
I needed people around me telling me “we succeeded in this way” before I could buy into it.
As I said above, the PUAs are popular because they pose as the real deal, they give you “evidence” that their methods work.
@WithinThisMind #356
“You may not have said it is the fault of women, but you definitely stated it is our responsibility.”
Ehm.. No? Which statement of mine said so?
It is just the way you choose to read what I wrote.
I think the responsibility falls on the society as a whole, but especially on men.
Women are, by and large, victims.
“Because if one of us had just got down on our knees and sucked his cock, this wouldn’t have happened, right?”
No. Wrong? Seriously WTF!?
I’ll ignore the rest of your strawman wankery, I have no responsibility to answer to things I didn’t say and ideas I do not hold.
@PZ #375
Indeed. Elliot Rodger could have turned to a prostitute but he didn’t, because he didn’t want sex and sex would not have solved his problem.
He wanted power, he needed to feed his ego.
This is where rape comes from.
It has nothing to do with sex.
@The Vicar #403
Here’s your membership card to the Strawman Argument Club.
Oh, FFS, everyone. It’s very clear what I mean by “right”. If you want to argue with what I actually mean (which is common colloquial usage, not a paper in a philosophy journal, and I don’t have time for philosophical treatises right now) then please do so. Otherwise fuck off. You’re being deliberately dishonest, probably because you don’t like the conclusion but don’t feel you really have a good counterargument.
We say people have a “right to healthcare”. We mean something more than that people have the freedom to purchase healthcare from wherever they choose. We mean something less than that the government goes in and forces an individual healthcare provider to provide healthcare to someone (yes, doctors can and do refuse patients, except in emergency situations). The former is libertarianism, the latter totalitarianism.
We say people have a “right to employment”. We mean something more than that people simply have the freedom to accept employment from whomever they choose. We mean something less than that the government goes in and forces an individual employer to hire an individual employee. The former is libertarianism, the latter totalitarianism.
What do we mean? We mean that these are important objectives to keep in mind when we organize and run society, and that a society with more employment and healthcare is a better one than one with less. We actually should give a damn about whether people have employment and healthcare, without going full-bore coercive on everyone. These are “programmatic” rights not “individual” ones. And if you don’t understand the difference, you are the one whose understanding is faulty. We can’t guarantee everyone a job as CEO and we can’t guarantee everyone a single room at the Mayo Clinic if they get sick. We can try to organize society at least for the greatest good for the greatest number.
So when I say there is a “right to sexual contact” I mean something more than that people have freedom have sex with who they please, and something less than forcing individuals to have sex they don’ t want. A society with more sexual fulfillment is a better one than one with less. We can’t guarantee it to everyone, but it is something to keep in mind in how we organize society. Is that how society is today organized? Hell no. The US is still a highly sexually repressed country, and society doesn’t really care whether people are sexually fulfilled or not. My argument is that we should try and organize society better that way. One way to do that is legalized sex work, with legal protections for sex workers.
If you want to argue this point, please go right ahead. A hearty fuck you to those who will (once again) claim I’m forcing individuals to have sex they don’t want.
@519
—-Ehm.. No? Which statement of mine said so?—-
The one I quoted, jackass. And every single time you’ve said people have a ‘right’ to sex/companionship.
—-No. Wrong? Seriously WTF!?—
But that’s exactly what you said. Are these not your words –
“Until desperate men are offered no compassion, no support and no alternative but only summary judgement like yours they will be easy prey to whoever promises to restore their ego, be they the MRA or the PUAs, and women will suffer the most.”
@520 –
So no, you still don’t get the difference between a person and a company/government, and no, you still don’t get that women are people and not objects.
—-society doesn’t really care whether people are sexually fulfilled or not. —
Why should they?
What obligation do I have to ensure, say, a pedophile is sexually fulfilled?
“…whoever promises to restore their ego…”
His ego is the FUCKING PROBLEM. He needed less of it, not more.
neuroguy
I have no points to argue but
bless your heart
I did, way back in 383:
“I laughed. Look how much you veer back when you actually defend your assertion. You go from “right to sex and intimacy” to “chipping in so people can learn social skills.” It’s something I can get behind; it’s a good idea. But it is not a right to sex and intimacy.
With food and health care, socialist governments heavily subsidize those industries, and on top of that give funding to those who still can’t afford it. Note differences. With food and health care, they’re (ideally) made specifically and readily to anyone, regardless of anything. You’re not describing a parallel to that; you’re describing a (somewhat) parallel to funding for education so that people can get qualifications for jobs. You’re describing a program where the put upon and frustrated individual would need to put in effort and change themselves to reap any benefit. Again, a good idea, but not a right to sex and intimacy.
This: “So, society doesn’t demand an employer hire any specific individual, but it does (or least it should, Republican rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding) demand that everyone chip in for public education so that individuals can learn what they need in order to be productive employees.”
… is the best argument you’ve made so far. It requires effort and change to individual in question. That’s better described as “a right to earn capability”; “the right to decent employment” makes the eventual goal more clear, is rather ill fitting besides, but not altogether objectionable… unless one were to use that phrasing to compare that “right” to to one’s right to food and health care to defend the incredibly atrocious assertion that one is owed sex like own is owed food and healthcare.”
Just admit you fucked up and move on.
So if he had access to a prostitute, this would all have been avoided?
You think he didn’t have access to prostitutes? No, he couldn’t look them up in the yellow pages, but I think that if he wanted to find one, he could have.
ck quoted this in the other thread
The telling quotes from the manifesto in the OP of this thread:
This isn’t a man whose “right” to sex was somehow repressed. This is a man who was utterly obsessed with being at the highest tier. It was what he felt he deserved. He wanted those women “that he most desired”. He wanted the popular ones, the hottest ones, the ones who were fitting A Superior One such as himself. But they didn’t want him back. This is Injustice. I’m sure there are women who might have desired him. But he didn’t want them back. He is indifferent to that state of affairs. Because his Attraction is the only attraction that matters.
Entitlement all the way fucking down.
neuroguy:
I think we’re at an impasse here then.
You think your intended meaning with regard to ‘right to sexual contact’ is clear.
Several commenters-myself included-do not. For example, your comment @347 does *not* make clear what you mean by “right to sexual contact”:
My reading of your comment is that human beings have needs and as a result are *ENTITLED* to sex and relationships. You feel this is a human right. You make no attempt to explain the nature of this right, nor how this right can be expressed by an individual.
Instead of choosing the clarify yourself, and/or restate your comments to minimize (or even eliminate) the potential for miscommunication, you’ve decided to place the blame for misunderstanding the words you wrote squarely on everyone else.
Oh, link to ck’s comment .
@neuroguy, 520:
Ah, yes. How silly of me. Because when I hear that I have the “right to a jury trial” I certainly don’t think that the government is going to guarantee it. It’s just something to think about when we have the architect design the courtroom.
Exactly what everyone means by “right”. This is, of course, the common every day understanding of “right” isn’t it? No one would say that they have a “right to petition the government for the redress of grievances” while actually **expecting** communication of anything more than the idea that a nation with more petitions is better off and a nation with fewer petitions is worse off.
Clearly, I just wasn’t thinking about the obvious meaning of your words.
the bolding in the above comment was my emphasis on neuroguy’s words.
Nope, not seeing your argument. Besides, ever hear of YOU doing something about yourself, like say taking cotillion lessons? Or do you prefer to moan, groan, and whine?
Neuro you’re a disgusting freak
anteprepro wrote:
The sad part is, those were just two of many examples. I could’ve posted about how he expected to win the lottery, and how anything less than $100 million didn’t seem to be worth it to him, or how he dropped out of one of the schools he attended because a girl he had a crush on was with someone else, or his demands of his father, or the fact he dropped his classes in another college because of the indignity of having to take the bus, or…
Whatever happened to seeker?
Couldn’t find page 2?
Not much I can add here except thanks to all who typed out such cogent responses in the first half of the thread to stigmatizing mental illness during a mass casualty event. Really good stuff. I used cites from the most reverend Crip Dyke (with citation) in a thread far afield.
The latter half of the thread has been both educational AND entertaining. Really enjoyed the idea of sex insurance. Now if the Republicans called THAT an “entitlement,” well, for once I wouldn’t have a bone to pick!
*with citation both to Pubmed and this thread and CD hirself
Chigau perhaps he assumed he had won and left? Or maybe it’s bedtime.
Seize #537
Your ‘bedtime’ thought is a more charitable assumption.
I’ll go with it.
I went through something similar to what the shooter did in terms of general social rejection until last year (more on that in a moment). However, instead of directing blame externally, I directed the blame squarely at myself and developed a rather severe inferiority issue, leading to my accepting the fact that I would be alone forever. Shortly after this, I discovered that I was attempting to engage entirely the wrong set of people socially, and, once I began socializing with a group of people who were much more like me, I found myself infinitely more satisfied with life, and, with some prodding and coaching from online friends I met here, found myself in a very happy relationship. I’m nt really sure what my point ere was, but there you are.
A. R #539
I am happy for you.
No, it is not clear AT ALL what you meant by “right”.
What IS clear is that you are either now deliberately and dishonestly waffling on the meaning of “right” in an attempt to walk back the odiousness of your original posts, or you adopted in the beginning a wholly arbitrary meaning of “right” that is not congruent with the common understanding of that word AT ALL, in order to frame an argument that was sickening in its utterly bankrupt intellectual dishonesty from the get go.
Yes, that explains the multiple requests you received to explain what you meant when you said “it’s a right”. Cuz it was so perfectly fucking clear.
neuroguy wrote:
(Emphasis mine)
Scenario 1: Rich and powerful men catch women on the streets with lassos and lock them up in Harems. There are literally NO single women out there.
Scenario 2: Women, being stupid by nature, are all sitting around at home waiting for Prince Charming on a white horse (cue scene from Shrek). They don’t give the ordinary guy a chance. This is why about half of all adult Americans are married. Yes, all adults includes the 18 yo teen and your 89 yo grandmother. No, the married doesn’t include all the people who are living together with no plans to get married (or unable to get married because of discrimination) or those who are planning their wedding for next year. Looks to me like most men are pretty successful at getting a relationship.
But I think that at this point it is abundantly clear that neuroguy doesn’t see women as people but as things men ought to have. Just like workers need to seize control over the means of production from the ruling class, men need to seize control over women from the ruling class.
Let’s not forget that while it might even be possible that everybody can satisfy their sexual needs with a big enough and subsidized sex work sector, he also claimed that people (i.e. men) are entitled to relationships. His radical new idea is just the good old patriarchal contract where a father sells his daughter to his son in law to use.
Caitie
I’ve been thinking along the same lines: Even if those “hot” women freely and willingly had sex with all the guys who want to fuck them, they would still get killed and abused because now they would be cheating. Because it is not actually about the need for love and intimacy, but about ownership.
It’s not like I don’t know a lot of single heterosexual women who’d want nothing more than a loving partner and a family. But they don’t fit the “conventionally attractive” slot, so it is as if they had vanished from the face of the earth whenever these discussions happen.
@ neuroguy
Perhaps you could tootle off and read : “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley.
.
Huxley taught George Orwell, but had very much the opposite take to Orwell’s Authoritarian nightmare. His was a world where the government simply gives people everything they want. The citizens have a right to everything, including sex.
(But watch how that all panned out.)
Thank you, Giliell, and thank you Caitie. I’ve tried to raise this point somewhere in the 300s, as well. This isn’t a guy who was isolated and desperate and lonely. This is about a guy who felt he was entitled to fucking (not having a relationship, fucking) women who are attractive and entitled to belonging to the gang of “popular” kids. He states this very clearly himself, in his own words, on video.
This isn’t about some need for human interaction or human understanding. It’s about feeling entitled to banging attractive women and being at the top of the social hierarchy.
And I am so tired of the disappearing of women considered “undesirable” in these discussions. Women considered fat and/or ugly get desperately lonely too. They desire human interaction, human relationships, human understanding desperately – just as desperately as men do. Funny thing is, they don’t go out and shoot men because they felt entitled to male sexual attention.
@Seize, #536:
Always glad that any comment has been found useful (even if the “use” was just raising a much needed laugh). Out of curiosity, was it the Stuart review? and where was it useful?
BTW, over on Twitter sexworkers are rightly enraged about the suggestion that they are the solution to the problem. They don’t want to fuck misogynist scum and risk their safety “for the greater good” any more than non-sex workers want to.
Maybe we should keep that in mind before we keep talking about them.
@WithinThisMind #521
You quote “right” as if I actually used that word.
I went through all of my posts and guess what?
I used it ONCE, here:
Well, markup fail. I guess it will teach me to use the preview.
FO, you are still not saying what it is you are suggesting. What I’m reading you saying is that these men who are frustrated need their pain acknowledged and supported.. HOW do you suggest we do this, and HOW will this change the mindset of entitlement which lies at the root of this problem?
Because contrary to what neuroguy is trying to argue, sex with someone else is NOT a right.
This has already been noticed and remarked upon, by Crip Dyke (here is the comment she was responding to), and neuroguy responded at comment 473:
At #475, I noted that this strongly suggests that neuroguy doesn’t have a problem with ownership of women in general, just so long as it’s by poor and powerless men.
Neuroguy never responded to clarify or confirm if our impressions were correct.
So you see, neuroguy, it is not that people have suddenly decided to become dishonest and start lying about everything you’re saying. It’s that everything you’re saying is a confused muddle of entitlement, poorly thought out justifications for entitlement, and misogyny, whether conscious or unconscious. You yourself have said words that rational people could reasonably interpret as you endorsing the ownership of women, and although people have pointed those words out to you in the expectation that you will say, “Oh goodness no, THAT isn’t what I meant,” you haven’t. So we’re left with the creepy, uncomfortable impression that you endorse treating women like objects that can be owned.
In addition, YOU are the one with a confused definition of what constitutes a right. YOU are the one who has refused to reconcile the inconsistency others have spotted between the phrase “right to sexual contact” and the actual proposals you have offered that would guarantee people a “right to sexual contact,” except that they wouldn’t; the would only give people a right to access classes and mental health services that might increase a person’s odds of finding a willing sex partner.
The problem is not our stupidity or lack of honesty. Stop pretending like the problem isn’t you. The problem is that you are confused and unsure what you actually mean by what you’re saying.
Also the problem is that you seem to regard women more as things than as people. Much like the shooter.
Again, for emphasis: there is no right to sexual contact, and any society that claims to respect the bodily autonomy and freedom of association of all of its citizens cannot possibly guarantee such a right.
Then, of course, as Gen, Uppity Ingrate points out, simply finding a way to allow Elliot Rodgers to have sex with someone would not have fixed him. He wanted a woman the way he wanted a fancy car: as an object to possess and show off and use to demonstrate his high status. By the time he reached 18, it was too late. He had already learned that women were things that he was entitled to possess and violently destroy if they malfunctioned. Elliott Rodgers having sex with a woman would have simply put that woman at risk; if he killed, he probably would have killed her by herself, instead of as part of a group, and it would never have made the news, even though the murder would have been just as much a hate crime motivated by hatred of women as the one we’re talking about was.
@ 548 —-I used it ONCE, here: “1) I firmly believe that women have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies, no exception.”—-
Except, of course, if they all happen to use that right to choose NOT to have sex with a particular guy, then they will suffer for it, right?
That is what you said here, isn’t it?
“Until desperate men are offered no compassion, no support and no alternative but only summary judgement like yours they will be easy prey to whoever promises to restore their ego, be they the MRA or the PUAs, and women will suffer the most.”
—-Help me here, I am not a native speaker. Exactly which one of these means “blowjob”?—
The one related to the reality of what happened. He wasn’t ‘desperate’. No one is ‘desperate’ for sex. There are mechanical solutions for the ‘wanting sex’ problem. There is plenty of compassion and support available for someone having trouble finding a date. For fuck’s sake, there are approximately 30 zillion websites available for that problem. There are alternatives all over the place, stop pretending there aren’t.
That isn’t what he wanted. He wanted someone to attend to his cock.
Stop trying to pretend this is about a lonely man who wanted a relationship. That’s bullshit. And what’s more, you know it is bullshit. You know it’s an intellectually dishonest way to frame what happened. And you know that is why you are getting called out. So knock it off, alright?
This isn’t a horny guy who just wanted sex.
This is an abuser who thought he had the right to abuse.
I’ve asked the question a couple times now, and you keep ignoring it – How exactly do you think this man would have treated any woman who did decide to go out with him? Think about that for a few minutes. Think that might have anything to do with why none of these women wanted to go out with him?
It was pointed out to me upthread that the women who were murdered can no longer be helped, so we have to think about teh menz now. We HAVE to, guys! Nothing more can be done for women, ever. Those were the last ones on the planet.
Let’s talk about how I cannot possibly know if not getting sexed is like a shattered knee, because it’s totes subjective!
Yeah, that was said in this thread. I cannot possibly know if breaking a knee is worse than not getting laid. That’s the mentality we’re up against. Even when I pointed out that treating not fucking a guy like breaking his knee suggests that the killer was killing in self defense, the misogynist scum dug deeper.
What the fuck am I? Women still exist. Yes, we could be talking about what we can to to save women and stop misogyny. But we aren’t. We’re arguing whether or not these women’s deaths are a good reason to enslave women.
Maybe men kill women because women are too uppity and don’t blow enough dudes? Have we thought of that? Maybe that’s the real issue here: dry boners. Because having a dry boner is way worse than getting fucking shot, raped or harassed because the owner of that dry boner is angry at you for not dampening his knob for him. If men have to live with the uncertainty of getting laid, women should have to live with the uncertainty of being murdered. Fairs fair, amirite? We don’t know which is worse. It’s sooooo subjective.
But let’s talk about what dudes want anyway, because it’s too late to help any women.
The killer is dead too and this entire thread has become about how to prevent men killing women by making women fuck men.
You do not stop entitled bigots from becoming violent by giving them more access to the people they hate. You don’t stop men from seeing women as things to be used by actually making women legally things to be used.
I cannot believe the derail that has happened here.
We do not have to have this discussion. We can shut it down and I wish we would.
As do I. Get rid of “chick ownership” by the rich and powerful and the problem goes away.
What the fucking fuck? This is very much like a PUA framing of the situation.
For argument’s sake, even if Wilt Chamberlain did have sex with 10,000 women, he didn’t monopolize them for their entire lives. Many of those went on to have sex with other men (and women), not always “rich and powerful” men exclusively.
People aren’t numbers. You really can’t apply a numerical algorithm to the problem of ungranted sexual wishes.
Indeed, Jackie.
It’s no coincidence that neuoguy appears to have the exact same theory about how women only have sex with rich powerful men, leaving “most men” unable to find sexual partners, as Elliot Rodger did. Rodger ended up killing; neuroguy merely envisions a world of sexual slavery (without having the guts to be able to accurately describe what it is he’s proposing, hence his incoherence).
Check out the diagram that Rodgers made, towards the middle of this article: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/california-shooting-elliot-rodgers-massacre-3607830
It’s literally the exact same thing neuroguy was describing with his “chick ownership by the rich and powerful.”
Bonerdampeners* of the world unite (preferably on your knees)! You have nothing to lose but your bodily autonomy, your agency as a human being, and your self-respect! Which aren’t worth some noble fellow suffering from Dry Boner, now are they? Lie back and think of $YOUR_COUNTRY.
Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the boners?
* No fatties, flatties, prudes, sluts, whores, dogs, trans, feminists, old bags (over 23), women of colour, hairies, snobs, geniuses, or women with disabilities need apply. Or exist, really.
I saw that, Sally. Shaenon over at WHTM points out that it looks alot like this one: http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2011/08/04/susan-walsh-chartbreaker-part-2/
But that can’t be. It’s only the internet and misogyny done there doesn’t effect the real world.
CatieCat,
http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120705231207/harrypotter/images/6/6e/Applause-harry-potter.gif
@554
While I agree that what this turned into is kind of heinous, I don’t think it should be stopped.
Because, if nothing else, it publises the thought process of the misogynist, and shows the counter arguments to their toxic bullshit.
Yes but you see, smhll women who have sex with too many men are worthless in dude points. Virgins who are beautiful (females, natch) net you mega super duper points, but uggos and fatsos and other undesirables like sluts don’t count towards your manliness points.
Fucking A right on the money, Jackie And CaitieCat also nails it with
Sexual contact with another human being is NOT a fucking right. I don’t care how sad your boner is, it’s not a fucking right. It CAN NOT be a right in a society that values bodily integrity and freedom of association like SallyStrange said.
I am flabbergasted at how this thread has gone. Literally stunned speechless (which is why I haven’t posted about it much).
And not just this thread. I was reading the South African Skeptics facebook thread about the New Statesman article Ophelia also linked to, earlier, and here are some quotes:
* “There is no patriarchy, because my wife works and I’m the stay at home dad and at school female teachers are the ones with authority” (paraphrased)”
* (Complaining about the stereotyped ‘white guy’): “It would be nice if [names] would send me the memo so i can understand when it’s ok to stereotype. to those of us who aren’t pragmatic ie we don’t change the rules when it doesn’t suit us, it would be nice if we too could have the map to navigate the patriarchal minefield.”
* “his motive was anger with a pinch of, ‘i’m an insane fuckwit’! his targets were those who didn’t give him any ie girls, and those who got more than their share, ie boys. it seems to me that he had enough anger to go around, both sexes were the subject of his loathing and both were victims of his attacks”
* “ergo…. lets fight stereotypes with new stereotypes….. fire with fire…. (instead of water).”
* “No [name], they want it addressed by becoming what it is that they profess to hate. they want to institutionalise racism and sexism. i cannot endorse that. i have a daughter and 2 sons. i want them treated equally under the law.” (the “they” here refers to feminists and anti-racists.
And on and on. This fucking day, I’m telling you. Like I said on Hunted the Mammoth, Skepticism my big white ass.
Oh, you women have reminded me, now we’re going to sadden the boners, because I forgot to include shrill as an exception.
And mother-in-law, ha-ha, amirite? I’m right, you know I am.
did you leave out the loose vaginas? lord knows we can’t have any loose vaginas
This isn’t remotely fair to FO. When desperate (and more importantly, entitled) men get taken in by PUA nonsense, women are the one’s who are most hurt by it. That does not suppose an imperative for women to waive their right to bodily autonomy. Further, FO explicitly stated that men should be the ones to address that problem; I don’t know why you imagine FO thinks women lose their rights, but that is an invention of your own.
From the last page:
”
So FO doesn’t know; he only knows the very first step, and who should handle the task.
Not me, Tash, I figure that’s covered by no oldies, sluts, and whores, right?
Dear me, it’s hard to keep up with all the things I’m supposed to not be. But then, I’m a lot of those things (inter alia, I am old, fat, trans, disabled, a former sex worker, not large-breasted, shrill & feminist, and I’m…let us gently say ‘not conventionally attractive’, perhaps? :) ), so perhaps I am biased, as well as undersexed (by men; funnily enough, I’ve never lacked for women partners, and I’m bi, so it’s not for want of wanting, as one might say).
I wonder if that means neuroguy thinks I have the right to demand sex from him, since I have a right to sex. Or is Jackie right, and is it that he really means ‘boner’s got a right to getting damp brah’?
My money is on that last thing.
Sorry to comment before I’ve got through the whole thread, but I’m only up to the mid-300’s and I have to run. Louis you rock so hard! Thank you so much for your insight, I have learned a lot. Crip Dyke and the rest fighting the othering, thank you too. But damn is Louis in fine form today!
Sorry, I haven’t read this whole thread and this may have been said before, but…If the problem is sexual frustration, if the problem is being nerdy or even having asperger’s, if the problem is being depressed and isolated, if the problem is society appearing to offer sex and then not delivering…if, in short, the problem is anything other than men, whey don’t we hear about shy, nerdy, sexually frustrated women shooting up fraternity houses? I’ve never heard of a woman murdering a bunch of men because she hated men or they wouldn’t put out for her. There are plenty of women who are shy, sexually frustrated, autistic, etc. But it simply doesn’t happen. The problem is men. End of story.
493
Well according to this thread 2 women a week are killed by their partner in England, and this is an example of misogyny, so the idea that being a misogynist precludes sex seems unlikely to be true. I’ll agree it’s likely to some extent, but I’m not comfortable with this statement when it can be read to imply that not getting laid is only due to a personal shortcoming.
Jacky
Hi. That was me. I stand by that comment, though I absolutely don’t think that not fucking a guy is anything like breaking his knee, in terms of being an immoral action.
Now, it’s possible that your only point was that for the woman turning someone down is not the same as breaking someone’s knee in terms of the morality, and that I read something else into your first sentence (reproduced below)..
Giving someone even a scratch is immoral, breaking up with someone after 10 years is not. However, the latter is (usually) much more painful.
You said not getting laid isn’t as bad as getting a broken knee. In most cases I suspect you’re right, but probably not in all. I can only speak for myself, but there was genuinely a time when I probably would have picked the broken knee, sad as that is to admit. Nothing about this was due to entitlement, and I didn’t hate any women over it, but if I was in a different environment who knows?
If we want to help women in this issue, we are going to have to help the men too. All this misogyny is due to a bunch of societal norms, which are harming men as well as women.
Your original comment
Fucking hell. It’s like boners all the way down.
diane
I think the problem is how to men deal with threats to their ego, and sexual failure is a big one. And also worth mentioning is how society glorifies male violence. I think there’s your difference between men and women.
Since this (that most males fail to find a mate) is the majority circumstance faced by nearly all mammals, and probably nearly all sexually reproducing life, it is certainly not society’s fault, except inasmuch that human society did not actively oppose/alter what was the default natural condition.
You know what? Lonely boners are loney. And sad. And on any day where 6 people aren’t killed because some guy with a sad lonely boner felt entitled to getting his boner wet I’ll be more sympathetic about the sad lonely boners.
Today is not that day. Today is not the day to compare sad boners to broken bones, because 6 people were killed over this shit Why is that so hard to see?
Gen, Uppity Ingrate and Ilk @ 561;
Quoted for truth and plus an unfeasably large number. How is it that so many people still fail to grasp this basic point; bodily autonomy is the essential right without which all other rights are rendered meaningless, and as such no person can claim any rights in another person’s flesh, including sexual rights. And it doesn’t help to posit some general right to sex from women as a collective, since the collective is made up of individuals, and so any right to sex would necessarily abridge the right of a specific woman somewhere to her bodily autonomy, which is unnacceptable.
That isn’t complex or difficult to understand. No one has suggested that men should be obligated to hand out sexual congress to anyone who wonders by and is feeling lonely or sexually frustrated and is attracted to men. Why is it so hard for some people to take the small extra step of recognising that women are people too, and so if it is unreasonable to expect men to hand out sex on demand, then that necessarily implies that… (fill in the blanks)
Funny how Neuroguy keeps focusing on the enforced celibacy, instead of the unwarranted expectations of the killer. Almost like NG can’t see the trees for the forest….
I am a little sad that my posts on this subject are the most popular ones on fetlife and my blog -_-
@564
—-This isn’t remotely fair to FO. When desperate (and more importantly, entitled) men get taken in by PUA nonsense, women are the one’s who are most hurt by it. That does not suppose an imperative for women to waive their right to bodily autonomy. Further, FO explicitly stated that men should be the ones to address that problem; I don’t know why you imagine FO thinks women lose their rights, but that is an invention of your own.—-
Try reading the whole thread, mkay?
@573 Gregory:
(fill in the blanks)
Imagine neuroguy looking at you quizzically, tiliting his head and saying:
“…annnnnd? You kinda trailed off there, dude, was there something else you were gonna say? It sounded like you had some sort of implication in mind?”
Amen.
This. And, Marc, if you really want to help rather than hurt, how about avoiding giving credibility and ammunition to the men who do believe that refusing to fuck them is equivalent to breaking their kneecap. Not getting fucked can be a source of stress and sadness, yeah, but it’s seriously fucking toxic to claim that it’s as bad as getting your kneecap broken. That’s a patriarchal misogynist myth and I will thank you to stop perpetuating it..
FUCK.
You did not just compare a person’s agency to leave a relationship/ability to deny sex to bodily harming another person.
When a man just murdered women for not fucking him.
I know you didn’t.
You could not possibly….
You really are defending this murdering fuckwad, aren’t you?
Wait what? Seriously!? That’s complete bullshit. Aside from the obvious fact that women are adult humans, not commodities and can choose their own partners, the entire premise is stupid. Rich and powerful men (RPM) make up roughly 2% of the population. Even with the most ridiculously hetero-normative, USA-centered take, RPM are taking at most 5% of the women which leaves 95% of the women for those who are less RPM. That’s assuming that each RPM has a monogamous wife and a monogamous girlfriend. (because if they weren’t monogamous, they would be available to the non-RPM. Also, why am I even bothering to answer something that is this gross and poorly thought out? Pissed off. Onward.)
neuroguy, quick question – do you really think that regular men would be less likely to “fail” if Laura Bush, Mellisa Gates, or Miriam Adelson were released back into the dating-wilds? The majority of RPM are older and have same age spouses. I seriously doubt that is the point you were trying to make.
So that leaves us with the girlfriends – hot blondes choosing to be with men that you don’t approve of. Sound familiar? You sick fuck.
I’m going to go not smash my monitor now.
http://i.imgur.com/hZYXzln.gif
Tashiliciously Shriked
I clicked on your nym and read what you had to say on your blog, which I then linked to on my FB page (where I also shared some of my thoughts).
@Gen, #572:
Ahem…
Inspiration/blame.
Marc Alban
Ah yes, the male ego. Funny, how only men have these ego things which get all sad and murderous if they don’t get enough sex/ money/status symbols.
Actually, no, this is not funny at all. Maybe, just maybe, this male ego thing is the problem? You never seem to hear of women having egos, much less stating that it is a great social wrong to not have their egos fed. How is it possible that so many men measure their self-worth in sex? So much so that not having a sexual partner is seen as a personal failure…among other men. This idea is so completely ridiculous if you spend one second applying logic to it.
You men, are responsible for your own ego. The world is not a frat house, and your self worth as a person is not intrinsically tied to your stupid fucking penis. Furthermore, if you do think that sex is something to impress your friends, you should grow the fuck up immediately. Nobody wants to be a notch on a bedpost, so that you can brag to your friends.
CD
I see what you did there…
Any discussion of MRAs/PUAs always triggers a memory for me. Someone once distilled the MRA attitude in a single sentence for me: [whine]But why don’t IIIIIIIIIII get to have sex with the centrefold?![/whine]
CaitieCat, getaway driver @ 577;
Sadly, I can imagine neuroguy – and legions of others just like him – saying words to that effect in a patronising tone that suggests that I must be out of my mind (or otherwise have something wrong with me/not be a ‘proper man’ {whatever that even means})to even entertain the notion that women are more than living sex dispensers (and sometime incubators) that exist solely to gratify the desires of men.
It is times like that when I feel a distressingly urgent need to break something.
@Gen, Uppity Ingrate and Ilk #550
I think I stated enough times and as clearly as possible that women don’t have a duty to fuck someone.
The very idea revolts me.
But let’s repeat it once more, just because: it is not about sex. Sex is irrelevant to the issue.
Regarding your question, my short answer is “I don’t know”.
But I can give it a try.
The acknowledging part is easy: stop dismissing it as trivial, take the suffering and frustration as real.
It certainly is real for the person experiencing it.
Once you do this, you must offer an alternative to the PUA/MRA mindset, you have to show the person that there is a viable way out that doesn’t require you to be a horrible person.
The charm of the PUA stuff is twofold:
* It is broken down in techniques and exercises that you can do, it gives you something practical to work with.
* Has testimonials of its effectiveness.
Both are largely phony, but they are attractive because they look viable.
So an alternative should be practical and doable and have some evidence of effectiveness.
A first step could be to find testimonials: people who suffered much more than most but overcame it and now lead happy lives with healthy relationships and no hatred towards women.
We could find out about their experience and see what helped them and what didn’t, which were the obstacles they were blind to and systematize this knowledge.
This solution is far from a magic bullet and right now is no more than vague idea, but I genuinely think it should be pursued.
I have been there, and I think that this could have made a difference.
It would hopefully weaken the PUA community and reduce the support that people like Rodger had.
I like to think that the entitlement problem would also deflate, but TBH that is probably a separate issue.
@WithinThisMind #553
So I say but what I REALLY said is pretty much the opposite.
Maaaan I get it now! YOU ARE PULLING MY LEG!
HAHAHAH! You Queen of Pranksters!
Gotta admit, you really had me there!
You totally fooled me once, but I won’t fall for it again. ;-)
Exactly. Because the problem I have with this:
Is that it is coddling and enhancing and reinforcing that mindset, that it isn’t trivial, that it’s a huge big important deal to not have the perfect sexual partner. If we’d work on minimizing the importance of it, that would keep it from becoming such a big deal in the first place.
Holy fuck, holy fuck, HOLY FUCK.
This is NOT a story about Elliot Rodger:
Police search for California man who shot at 3 women who refused to have sex with him.
@Carlie:
Which leads me to the thought: could it be that all those guys accusing feminists of a victim mindset are merely projecting?
Hmm!
It’s all the…rage.
Nearly as pernicious as the attitude that someone is entitled to a sexual partner is the idea that there is such a thing as a “perfect” sexual partner out there to be found. “Perfect” sexual partners are not found, they are made, when two people in a relationship grow and change with each other and for each other.
(With a relative conception of “perfect”, and possibly not necessarily limited to two.)
@FO
That doesn’t necessarily follow. Perhaps the reality that needs to be faced is that it’s just difficult for everyone, or even for particular subsets (introverts maybe?).
Jackie the wacky wrote:
I was wrong and overreacted when I said that. I’m sorry. However, I do still believe that talking about the problem with men is completely on-topic here, since that’s where this problem really originates from.
The issue I have is that this was caused by a number of severe problems with male culture. Talking about ‘doing stuff for women’ often ends up being hijacked into victim blaming (although it seems we’ve got a fair bit of something similar here already with the “right to sex” stuff), and the six dead women in this story did absolutely nothing wrong, and realistically couldn’t have done anything that would’ve deserved this. Maybe I’m missing something, but I think that the only thing we can do for these women now is to try to find some way to prevent this from happening again.
I don’t disagree with the majority of people here in that misogyny was a significant contributor to what happened, and certainly the prime factor in how this young man chose his targets. I do disagree with others here in thinking that this was the source the violence itself. As I’ve read through this young man’s autobiography, I’ve been struck by how self-absorbed, entitled, and utterly resentful he was towards anyone who seemed to be enjoying life. For example, take this section about him meeting with his five year old half-brother after partially reconciling with his father:
He never seems to describe more than one or two friends, and is often deeply jealous or resentful of the ones he does call friends. When one of his buddies gets a girlfriend, starts having a more positive outlook, and starts teasing Rodger, he eventually explodes in anger at his buddy. It’s impossible for me to tell exactly how Rodger’s friend was teasing him, but gentle teasing is one of the few ways men are permitted to express concern for a friend (and Asperger’s may have caused Rodger to misinterpret).
I firmly believe that if he hadn’t found the toxic misogyny of the manosphere, he would’ve found some other toxic ideology to stew in, and that we’d just be talking about a different set of victims here. The defining characteristics visible in his little manifesto seem to be very similar to what you see in most hate groups, whether they’re gender-based (like the MRAs and PUAs), race based, or anything else.
SallyStrange
How bad it is is subjective and personal. It’s bizarre that anyone would claim that they know how each of these things feel for everyone. Just so I’m clear, I mean not getting laid over a long period of time, not just in one particular case.
Tethy
Are you saying this to me personally? I don’t need to be told, but a lot of men do. That’s my point.
Jackie the wacky
Not one bit, but I don’t see how I can be clearer in what I am saying, so I think it’s best if we don’t discuss this any further with each other.
carlie
I do agree that if you downplay issues people will be less upset by them. I would never ever say that it’s a huge important deal not to have the “perfect sex partner” but I do think it is a very big deal not to form sexual relationships, (though for some people it’s not a big deal or even a little deal) and it feels wrong to lie about that. I’m not sure what to think about this suggestion.
Gen
What’s to say about that? Everyone here thinks it’s terrible. Do you think this should just be a sympathy thread? These aren’t rhetorical questions.
I can’t even with the menz right now (not directed at you specifically, ck) and I’ll have to pick that up later. However, I also can’t let that pass without pointing out that Rodger also shot multiple other victims who survived, including one woman on that sorority lawn who lived when two others died within a few feet of her. I point out that a houseful of women who didn’t let Rodger in heard him shooting down others outside and they all know he meant to kill them too if he’d only gotten on the other side of that door. I point out that the purpose of a hate crime is to make a public statement to everyone of the targeted group: this means you, this is meant to punish you and all your kind. And as society already teaches women to blame themselves for violence against them, so it goes here.
source via Echidne of the Snakes
From comments at Mammoth:
So yeah, I think even though the conversation about toxic masculinity and its enforcement on men needs to be had (this is what it took to get mainstream attention, really, after all these years?) how about remembering that the women who didn’t actually get killed this time around still deserve some compassion and consideration for their pain and heartbreak, and the effects of being seen as nothing but hunting trophies in the men’s toxic masculinity game.
Right, but it does exist, and he did find it. And other people are stewing in it too. And it’s not just the “manosphere”; it’s everywhere.
Pteryxx
Is anyone forgetting that? Does something so obvious have to be said? Would you like it to be said?
Not nice reading.
Pteryxx wrote:
Fair enough. There will be plenty of people walking around forced to bear the scars (some physical, some not) of this event for years to come. It does infuriate me that this tragedy will pass with everyone bobbleheading about how it was a terrible tragedy and that it is entirely likely that absolutely nothing will come from it until the next “completely unexpected” tragedy.
Yeah I get it. I don’t care. It’s fucking disgusting that you’re promulgating this bullshit.
SallyStrange:
Agreed.
Even *if* I were willing to grant that lack of sex is a source of incredible stress (and I’m really not prepared to do that)–so what?
Sally stange
You might think so, but I can’t agree with that if you don’t give me a reason why. I don’t even know if you disagree with what I’m saying, or don’t like that I’m saying it now in this thread.
Tony!
Then logic wins?
Need… for sex? I get the need for intimacy, the need for physical contact, and the need for sexual gratification – but you can get all three of those separately. So you don’t need sex to relieve the stress, ergo, QED, ipso facto, E Pluribus Unum, sex is not a fucking right.
I think the onus is more on you, Marc, to explain how precisely you know that the similarities between not having sex for a number of years is remotely similar to having your knee broken.
Excuse my grammar, please, but I think you get my meaning.
Marc Abian
The last paragraph that you quoted was more a general riff on men and this concept of a specifically male ego. A concept that you brought up, and I mocked in the two paragraphs of the comment that you didn’t quote.
While there is such a thing as a sense of self-worth and self-confidence, there is no such thing as a male ego. Very similar to the social construct of a soul, it simply doesn’t exist even though it is widely held to be a real thing which justifies a lot of irrational behavior.
Even if there was such a thing, a thread about murdered victims is not the place to sympathetically discuss male egos, and how you can understand why wounded male egos logically blossom into murderers. We really do not give a single shit about the menz or their poor fucking egoez.
“I point out that the purpose of a hate crime is to make a public statement to everyone of the targeted group: this means you, this is meant to punish you and all your kind.”
Yes.
It never ceases to amaze me how little women and girls are worth in this world. The Southern Poverty Law Center didn’t even put misogyny on its list of hate crimes they’ve been battling for decades until, what, two years ago? Violence by men is the #1 cause of Emergency Room visits for women in the United States. More women are murdered in domestic abuse cases than people who have been killed in the Vietnam war. And that’s just in the ‘enlightened’ West.
That would matter if women were considered fully human.
It’s not the ‘manosphere’, it’s not the MRAs, I’ve heard the same misogynist talk from men I grew up around, men I’m related to, men who think they’re nice and decent people, since I can remember. It’s a MAINSTREAM attitude, I don’t like that people try to paint woman hate or the trivialization of women and girls as a fringe, MRA phenomena. I wouldn’t even say MRAs are an extreme version of this attitude. It’s so mainstream, so casual and matter-of-fact, that it barely registers for most people. The only difference is that MRAs think men lack rights, while most men know that isn’t true. They know women aren’t worth anything in our society.
theoreticalgrrl, if I might, did you perhaps mean “USan people killed in the Vietnam War”? Because my understanding is that North Vietnam lost approximately 1 million people during the USan part of that war, alongside the 2-300kilopeople lost by the ARVN, some tens of thousands more South Vietnamese civilians, all alongside the usually-mentioned (in US discourse) 57,000 or so USan troops.
I completely agree with your thesis, and that violence against intimate partners is an endemic and horrific issue – but unless I’ve missed some recent numbers, I don’t think there are quite so many people as that dying in those situations in the western democracies over any kind of annual period, no? In the 1.5 million+ range?
@589
How do you handle the cognitive dissonance?
You can’t say that women have the right to choose their partners and say that society has an obligation to provide all men with sexual opportunities of the feminine kind.
These two statements are in direct conflict with each other.
marc is clearly spelling out the game he is playing.
why aren’t you all capitulating to his game?
you might make him angry, and you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.
I just can’t get over how much this:
is bullshit.
First, it removes the agency of women entirely from the equation.
1. Rich dudes want women
2. ????
3. Rich dudes get all the women.
Conclusion: Regular dudes are “set up to fail.” (whatever the fuck that means)
See, THIS is why this stupid shit is not only unreal, but also misogynistic. Because you just assume that women are attracted to money and will only date rich dudes. Simultaneously, you take it as a given and remove the woman’s autonomy entirely from the equation.
Not only that, but it’s simply untrue. Are there *some* women who will only date really rich dudes? Yes, certainly. But most women? No. Nope. Not even. What we want is someone who’s able to stand on his own feet, has some ambitions for his life and some prospects. Basically, the same things we demand in ourselves. This is just common sense–if it were true that women only went for rich dudes, then there would literally be no working class or middle class couples getting married. And yet society has not ground to a halt, and strangely, people are still hooking up, even with *gasp* lowly minimum wage stiffs, pizza delivery drivers, IT pros and adjunct teachers. SOMEHOW WE STILL GET LAID!
Maybe your view of the world is what’s wrong with the world. Maybe you’ve been on a string of bad dates. Maybe you suffer from confirmation bias. Maybe you aren’t looking for partners with substance. Maybe you’re trying to date outside your weight class, so to speak. There’s a lot that may be wrong with the way you date. But many many years of data tell me that the above quote? That’s total shit.
You are right CatieCat, it’s based on U.S. soldier casualties, not total number of deaths in total, and compared to an eight to nine year period of domestic homicides, according to the American Medical Association.
“total number of deaths in total”? Sorry, the percocet I need to take, due to a domestic assault that did permanent damage to my head and neck, is kicking in. Irony.
F.O. @ 589
See, here’s the problem.
THERE IS NO SYSTEM.
Women are literal human beings, with their own internal world, their own will and their own shit going on. If you want to have a relationship with one of us, then you need to do what you’d do with any dude you want to hang out with–talk to us, ask us to do something with you, rinse and repeat. If we like you, we’ll keep hanging out. If not, we don’t.
It really is that simple.
Look dude, not everyone is going to have a relationship. I get that this is hard for you. I get that this hurts. But not every person is going to get married, or have sex, or date. Some people go years without these things. So go their whole lives. Some choose it, but many don’t. This goes for men AND women.
My best advice is this—make yourself into the kind of person that YOU are okay with. Be your best, most awesome self–not for the hope of “getting a girl” but because you have to live with you for the rest of your life. Approach people that seem cool, hang out, see what happens. But don’t hang your self-worth on that. Because some people never ever get the sex/relationship/stuff. This is the truth of the world.
Thanks for clarifying, theoreticalgrrl. :)
I can’t address every incorrect statement made by neuroguy, because I am planning on going to sleep today. But here are some of the most notable and/or under-addressed (in my opinion):
the “bourgeoisie” does in fact owe people food, and as far as I’m concerned, healthcare too. For that and similar reasons, we do not treat property rights as inviolable since we empower an agency to take assortedly sized chunks of people’s property away from them whether they consent or not, to pay for food, shelter, healthcare, and other basics for people who can’t provide them for themselves in the marketplace.
Nobody owes anyone sex however. The right to bodily autonomy IS inviolable. There ethically can’t be an agency, no matter how many people vote for it, that would take people’s bodily autonomy away from them long enough to provide everyone with a minimum of sex and companionship.
Aside from that, wealth is something rich people have and the proletariat doesn’t. Sex is not something women have that men don’t. Therefore, complete and utter analogy fail.
incidentally, there’s no such thing as a right to a job either; there’s a right to food, shelter, healthcare, etc., and society is perfectly in its right to redistribute those resources in such a way that everyone can have them (not just the freedom and opportunity to acquire them for themselves, but literally have these things handed to them); this is impossible for intimacy, since it would require violating people’s bodily autonomy to “hand them” sex & relationships in the same way they can be handed food and shelter.
except that’s not actually what “women’s magazines” do. Women are not being told that they’re entitled to relationships, or that they’re rewards for basic human decency, that men who won’t commit are somehow committing a wrong against them. Quite the opposite; the mainstream story asserts that fear of commitment is the natural state of man, and that getting one to commit is absurdly hard work that requires giving up most of your self, and a woman still should be grateful as all hell if one deigns to stick around.
again: people do deserve to have food and healthcare handed to them; they do not deserve having sex handed to them, because there’s no way to “hand” people sex without violating someone’s bodily autonomy. Something that’s not the case for the provision of healthcare and food (unless you’re feeding the rich to the starving, that is…)
There’s no such thing as a right to a job. And absolutely you’re a “food dispenser” and a “healthcare dispenser”; because the dispensing of either of these things, even when you have objections about dispensing it to a person, doesn’t violate your human rights, while receiving them is a human right. Not so for intimacy.
which is not the same as giving them sex; which is how sex is different from food, in that people don’t just have a right to learn the skills necessary to feed themselves, they have a right to the food itself, and to be given food by others. NOT SO WITH SEX.
Basically what I’m saying is that comparing intimacy and food is an analogy fail, as the former is something people should be free to do and should have the right to education about; whereas the latter is something people ALSO have the right to be handed to them if they cannot get it otherwise.
Actually, yes it does. The human right not to be discriminated against based on race, sex, etc. means an individual has an obligation towards another not to discriminate; similarly, when a society decides that healthcare or some other service is a right, providers are not actually permitted to turn people away (hence the pretty regular whining by assorted Euro/UK Christians who got fired/suspended from public service jobs for refusing to deal with Teh Ghey, and hence the drama with that judge who wouldn’t marry an interracial couple.)
This is why intimacy cannot be a human right. It would violate the designated providers’ bodily autonomy to be forced to give people intimacy.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAaaa……… (interesting gender biases are coming out in this assumption that somehow taking women out of the equation makes involuntary celibacy rare)
1)the justification for abortion has precisely fuck-all to do with people’s right to be an abortion doctor; the right to abortion is the right of a person to bodily autonomy, meaning to the right to decide for oneself whether one wants a developing human to use one’s body.
2)The correct analogy in sex work therefore would once again be the right of sex workers to bodily autonomy, namely to decide how, when, and who a sex worker wants to “use” their body.
3)Conversely, a “right to sexual contact” would be rather analogous to a “right to gestation”; a right that would violate the bodily autonomy & integrity of the person who will be required to do the contacting/gestating.
you don’t have a right to employment, but the human rights that are meant to be satisfied by gainful employment are in fact satisfied by a “violation” of property rights, in the form of taxes which you have to pay whether you want to or not, to pay for the employment of public servants as well as for the provision of food, shelter, etc. of people who can’t do so via employment.
neither. it is the rights to bodily autonomy and free association. Which grant a right to be a sex worker and have the same legal protections as other kinds of workers.
Also: there’s neither a right to sell anything you want, nor a right to buy anything you want.
just noting here that neuroguy is calling the defense of the most basic and most absolute of human rights to be hairsplitting.
actually, no “we” don’t. “sexual slavery” means violation of bodily autonomy for sexual purposes, which can happen to people who aren’t sex workers as well as to sex workers where sex work is legal.
it is correct to point out that if sexual contact becomes a right comparable to the right to food or healthcare, then designated providers would lose the right to refuse service of those rights (kinda the way ERs have been forbidden to turn away patients), which would be sexual slavery regardless of whether sex work is legal or not.
not in the slightest, since there’s a constant shift back and forth between comparing this “right” to basic human rights that people have the right to have given to them even at the violation of other people’s lesser rights (e.g. food), and comparing it to things people are free to do without undue burden as long as they don’t violate other people’s rights (e.g. having a job), which are two severely different categories of things.
No, “we” don’t. And neuroguy even proves himself wrong by pointing out that emergency rooms aren’t allowed to turn away people. Similarly, where the right to education is taken seriously, kids can’t be denied education by individual teachers and/or individual schools, either (but then, where these things are considered rights, they are being provided by government agencies, not private businesses). Because actual rights are things people can’t be denied when they ask for them. That’s what makes them rights, rather than freedoms or privileges.
nope.
demanding that people understand stuff he basically made up is fucking rich.
Aside from that, shifting back and forth between basic human rights and things like employment or buying stuff is pretty solid evidence that it’s neuroguy who’s confused about the difference between rights, freedoms, and privileges.
missed one:
that’s not how patriarchy works (that’s not even how hypergamy works;); that’s not how women work; that’s not how the purity-myth works; and it’s not how sex works, either.
Basically, nothing about that statement reflects reality.
And to tie this back to the original topic, it should be noted that this murderous asshole that was supposed to the the topic of this thread was in fact rich and in comparison to the rest of US society, quite powerful already, what with being a cis straight white-passing dude with connections. By this plutogamic “reasoning”, he should in fact have had women flocking to him. He believed in this model, and it failed him, and he threw a murderous shitfit about it.
Interesting how neuroguy apparently believes in the same model.
WOW! I’ve not had a happy life at all and was without a girlfriend from 1992 to 2006. I did have girlfriends prior to this time and I’ve kissed plenty of women. The thing is, I never wanted to hurt women. I figured the problem was me (that I’m ugly, uninteresting, too depressed for any woman to want to spend time with me, that I was a bad boyfriend in the past, and plenty more). I now realize that plenty of things on that list were misperceptions on my part, but part of my point is that I didn’t externalize my situation. I guess I didn’t feel entitled to a girlfriend no matter how much I wanted one or more during that time frame. Why would I want to hurt someone I was attracted to?
With regards to the above quote, I have often felt bitter and resentful about people who’ve had better lives than me, such as people who suffer from no mental illnesses (much less four of them), people who’ve had lots of boyfriends or girlfriends, people who’ve had way more sex than I have, people who weren’t abused in any way, and so on. There have also been times when I have thought, and I still believe this to a large degree, that happy people are at least slightly delusional and/or disconnected with reality and/or willfully ignorant (I believe there is some research to back this up). Depressive realism backs up my hypothesis to some extent…………….but enough about that. The point is that I don’t want to hurt or kill them. On one hand I wish I could get them to view the world realistically. On the other though, I don’t want them to be as miserable as me. I do love the rare occasions when I find someone who views the world in the same way I do though. But thinking they deserve to die because my my life sucks in comparison? That’s just something I can’t wrap my head around.
It does sound as though Elliot Rodger lived a miserable life, but aside from his sense of entitlement and his misogyny, I wonder if his behavior would have been different were it not for the social stigma of suicide. I know he eventually did this, but that seems to have been in reaction to getting caught. Why couldn’t he just end his own life rather than his own and others?
He was seeing a therapist. I bet they were working on his self-esteem, which could partially explain his delusions of being the perfect guy. The problem is that improving their self-esteem makes entitled sociopaths even worse. They need to be taught empathy, not that they are good people who deserve the best in life.
@ Jadehawk
[giggles sheepishly] … Well, there is a way … [/giggles sheepishly]
Tony (#603)
Bad grades were a source of incredible stress for me. Like panic-attacks-and-self-harm level stress. I irrationally saw grades as a measure of my self worth. But did I go on a murder spree, killing teachers for giving me lower grades than I wanted? Of course not. First, I never believed teachers were the ones responsible for damage to my self esteem. Even if they chose a grading system that made it nearly impossible to get top scores on tests, I was the one that refused to measure myself by a reasonable standard (or not measure myself at all).¹ I could see that even as I continued to punish myself for bad performance. Second, I do not believe I’m entitled to kill anyone.²
So, “so what” indeed! There are a million sources of stress and a million threats to self worth, but it takes, at a minimum, entitlement and misapplied blame to turn incredibly stressed, ego-damaged people into murderers.
…………..
¹ After therapy and medication didn’t help, I changed my major to one in a department with a different testing/grading system. Holy crap, did that ever help.
² Unless they are an immediate, obvious and credible threat to my life and I have no other way to stop them.
Cyranothe2nd (#613)
Yes, thank you. There are definitely a few unstated premises in that idiot’s chain of “logic” and they’re all dripping with misogyny. And wrong.
In the long and sorry history of school shootings, there have been at least several cases where the psychological anguish associated with the unfulfilled desire for better grades WAS the motivating factor that triggered the perpetrator onto his rampage.
I suppose next we’ll be seeing neuroguy insisting that good grades is a right to which everyone is entitled.
So in comment 597, Marc Abian responded to me. I said:
And Marc responded:
And since he stated so clearly that these aren’t rhetorical questions, I’ll comply by replying.
MarcIt’s an indication of your underlying prejudice that you assume that the only thing to say about the women who were affected (PROTIP: That is every single woman on the planet) is “just a sympathy thread”. As if women don’t have any concerns over this that can be raised other than sympathy for the victims. As if women don’t have any interesting or relevant contributions to make to this topic if the topic relevant to the shooting isn’t about The Men, which is what’s really important after all.
That’s fucking disgusting, man. Really.
@brianpansky #595
“Perhaps the reality that needs to be faced is that it’s just difficult for everyone, or even for particular subsets (introverts maybe?).”
It’s indeed a possibility.
Still, whether if it’s all or just few, providing our young men with the tools to better understand themselves and relate to women in a healthy way could go a long way to keep them away from misogyny.
@Cyranothe2nd, there’s no such thing as a moderate ally #589
I am in a happy relationship, so believe me, I know what I am talking about.
You are dead wrong, there is plenty of systems: any book about cognitive behavioral therapy or anxiety management or self-help is proof of that.
You see, we actually agree: be your best, let go of your need for validation and all the rest.
But many people would need this broken down in simple steps and supported by testimonials of some kind before they can commit to it, and it’s a hard long journey.
The problem is that this information that for you (and for me, now) is only obvious is not readily available, and even when it is people don’t buy it because they don’t believe that it actually works.
I realize that this is completely out of your experience, but this is how people end up PUAs.
ck @#596:
I can’t let this pass without noting that four of the ‘six dead women’ were, in fact, men.
(This lack of attention to, you know, facts drives me up the wall. I’m sorry, but there it is.)
I don’t really have anything constructive to add 625 comments later, but OMFSM, Crip Dyke’s comment @466 reminded me of the episode of Futurama where Kif (as a elephant seal) says that it’s unfair of Bender (the reigning male elephant seal) to have all the females to himself, and instead each male should have a moderately sized harem. Even in the show, that was portrayed as a silly notion. But the idea that each man should have a woman (or that the ultimate injustice is that one guy has them all), fuck that noise.