Do I need to mention Roosh, he of the books full of rape stories, he of the cunning plan to end rape by legalizing it on private property, he who announced a world-wide set of meetings of his fellow pick-up artists, he who cancelled all of those meetings as people around the world learned of them and laughed at him? Yes, I do, but I’ll be brief. He had a “press conference”, that started like so:
All right, so the world has gone insane in the past week. Why? Number one, I had organized meet ups around the world for men to enjoy a social happy hour to meet in private and talk about anything. Work, politics, girls, just to meet. Okay? Number two, a year ago I wrote an article How to Stop Rape. This article, to a 10-year-old, was obvious that I didn’t intend to legalize rape or cause harm against women. But starting on Sunday, a lot of you have lied by saying that I am a pro-rape advocate. He wants women to get hurt! And then the third thing, you said the meet ups are about rapists. They want to gather to learn how to rape. They are going to exchange tips. Some of you have called it a rape rally! What the hell is that? A rape rally? So because of that I’ve been all over the world in terms of the news. Over 100 articles have been written.
I think Dave Futrelle has Roosh’s history covered. Social meetups are not the problem. The problem is that Roosh brags about traveling around the world “banging” women who are drunk, unconscious, or otherwise unable to consent, he publishes recipes for tricking women into sex, he regularly disparages women, and yes, he published a bizarre article in which he suggested that rape would go away if the law disallowed charging men with rapes that occurred on their own private property — after all, the woman consented to entering his rape cave, therefore she consented to anything he might do to her there. So basically his “press conference” was all about lying about what he does.
But the operative sentence is that last one: Over 100 articles have been written
. That’s exactly what he wanted. His plan was a success.
Therefore, I now declare Pharyngula to be a Roosh-Free Zone. I won’t be mentioning him in the future. I’m entering his name into the blacklist, so don’t even bother trying to mention him in the comments. Defending him will be grounds for an automatic ban.
無
He claims everything as victory. But seeing so many people stand up against rape gave me hope and I hope the publicity never stops. He failed. He knows it. He is a liar. If no one paid any attention, he would claim victory too. Think about how Creationists operate. He is like that only anonymity allows Doosh to continue to get away with rape and thus embolden other rapists.
Here’s the ever wonderful Lindy West on the issue
If he slipped on a dog turd and fell into a nest of ground digger wasps, he’d claim that he meant to do that,
ARGH
PZ, I understand your wish, but I was trying to post a link to an article by Lindy West and I can’t avoid the name in the headline….
Maybe a link to her Tweet works…
Generally someone writing a “satire” tries to make it blatantly obvious, by the end, that it’s a satire. If the Unspeakable One’s article read like a serious proposal (and not “A Modest Proposal”) to most readers, it’s his fault, not the readers. “Satire” is the third or fourth refuge of a scoundrel.
It’s also usually fairly clear just what they’re supposed to be satirising. But even in the worst cases, where the satire falls so flat that nobody can make any sense of it, if somebody flat out asks what the intended target was, the author can give an answer…
One one hand we are told by mens rights activists that being outed and having hateful emails sent is no big deal, then it happens to them and it’s the end of the world as we know it.
The example we often consider in evaluating satire is Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”. There, he was clearly satirizing the brutality of English policy in Ireland. That’s a mark of good satire: we can quickly find the source.
What was that asshole satirizing? Anyone who declares it to be satire is required to name the real problem that he was exaggerating for effect. And the only reasonable answer would be…the stuff that he writes on a daily basis, does for profit in his very own books, and that he actually practices. Which means it makes no sense that he authored it as a satire, unless it was in apology and was followed by an immediate change in his behavior.
Which did not happen, obviously.
Yeah, fal1 mentioned this guy on the Feminism thread earlier this week. I was convinced it was a stunt for publicity then. The “press conference” and analysis PZ posted just seems to confirm my view. What will matter in the long run is not so much that his provocation united so many people in protest against him, but rather where things go after the protests. If the protests happened, they’re over, and everyone felt good, then little progress was made. The only winner there is the douchebag, because he got a bunch of free publicity. If instead it made people angry enough to organize and push back against these kinds of tactics and messages, (like the LGBT community did after “Dr. Laura” in 2000), then it’s much easier to see the protests as a net positive.
@Jackie #2 For there to be a positive outcome here, what needs to happen is that protest participants get together again. Ideally, they discuss some of the BS the Rooshbag is promoting in his books and decide to address them. Pressure lawmakers to start fixing laws that do not define date rape tactics as actual rape and sexual assault, etc. Actually push police to do their jobs and investigate rape, like the Slutwalk campaign is doing now. Start campaigns to educate young women about the sort of “dating” tactics he’s promoting. So that when they encounter crap like “negging”, or the kind of provocative comments he uses to draw women into a conversation during a night out, they can shut them down early. “Don’t Bang Denmark” should be a common outcome going forward.
Yeah, fal1 mentioned this guy on the Feminism thread earlier this week. I was convinced it was a stunt for publicity then. The “press conference” and analysis PZ posted just seems to confirm my view. What will matter in the long run is not so much that his provocation united so many people in protest against him, but rather where things go after the protests. If the protests happened, they’re over, and everyone felt good, then little progress was made. The only winner there is the douchebag, because he got a bunch of free publicity. If instead it made people angry enough to organize and push back against these kinds of tactics and messages, (like the LGBT community did after “Dr. Laura” in 2000), then it’s much easier to see the protests as a net positive.
@Jackie #2 For there to be a positive outcome here, what needs to happen is that protest participants get together again. Ideally, they discuss some of the BS the douchebag is promoting in his books and decide to address them. Pressure lawmakers to start fixing laws that do not define date rape tactics as actual rape and sexual assault, etc. Actually push police to do their jobs and investigate rape, like the Slutwalk campaign is doing now. Start campaigns to educate young women about the sort of “dating” tactics he’s promoting. So that when they encounter crap like “negging”, or the kind of provocative comments he uses to draw women into a conversation during a night out, they can shut them down early. “Don’t Bang Denmark” should be a common outcome going forward.
Giving me hope is a positive outcome.
I would like to invite R**sh over to my house. I won’t say what I’ll do when he gets here, but he has my word that by virtue of entering my property he has already “consented” to it. Or does that logic not apply to men?
So am I the only one reminded of the Monty Python sketch about someone advocating that robbery and murder be legal because making more things legal will cause the crime rate to go down?
Jake Harban
Not. Funny.
Never. Funny.
What’s not funny? Which part?
So… uh…
That Beyonce, eh? Pretty good.
The part where you’re alluding to R’s proposal to make rape legal on private property.
To come back to the discussion about satire: If that wasn’t what you were getting at, what was it?
Jake Harban:
Your rape joke, about R having given consent, so hey, har har har. Not fucking funny.
R***h believes that entering private property causes one to forfeit basic rights of personhood. However, R***h himself almost certainly enters private property on many occasions. Proposing that people be subject to their own beliefs is hardly an unusual or offensive thing. Neither is dismissing the legitimacy of a double standard (in which your beliefs explicitly state that rules don’t apply to you personally).
So what’s the problem? If R***h believes that your personhood ends at someone else’s property line, then I’m happy to welcome him onto my property under those terms.
Unless “not funny” was meant to be literal rather than a generic statement of disapproval, in which case yes, I admit it wasn’t really a joke.
What rape joke? I was quite deliberately vague about what I planned to do if R***h accepted my invitation.
The problem is that it’s fucking wrong to use rape as an argument. You’Re trivialising it to score a cheap point.
Hint: Stop digging.
OK, honest question. Exactly how am I “using rape as an argument?” I was pretty sure I was denouncing it.
One is capable of pointing out how stupid his idea is without waxing about him suffering the consequences of his stupid idea. Not that hard.
I’m not sure how mentioning the logical conclusion of his idea counts as “waxing about him suffering the consequences of it” and I’ve never heard anyone object to the idea. It’s far less in-depth than other places I’ve seen the concept expressed such as here or even on Pharyngula itself— namely, that treating consent as unimportant is clearly absurd in every other scenario, so it’s irrational to assume sexual consent is different.
Erm, when I posted this:
…did that sentence imply that I was planning to rape him? If so, my apologies.
Jake Harban #25
ffffff
well I thought you meant you were going to serve him tea and cookies
jeez
Yes.
Thank you
Jake:
Uh huh. People are often deliberately vague about someone taking a shower in prison, too, but what they mean is crystal clear.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. The point I was trying (and fumbling and failing) to make is that if personhood stops at someone else’s property line, this has many effects other than the one he finds personally convenient, any of which could conceivably bite him at any time. I considered writing: “When he arrives, I’ll steal his wallet” then dismissed it as too generic and considered: “When he arrives, I’ll lock him in the basement and show him powerpoint presentations about feminism,” and then figured that deliberately not mentioning it and letting each reader fill in the worst fate they can imagine would be most effective.
That the worst fate many people can imagine would be rape seems painfully obvious in retrospect, so my apologies for failing to remove my privilege blinders before posting.
@Jake Harban: It would be nice if you quit assuming everybody else is too stupid to see what you’re doing. “That the worst fate many people can imagine would be rape” – is such a passive-aggressive nonpology it’s painful. Golly gosh, how ever could anyone have thought you were hinting at rape, oh, clearly *they* are at fault for foolishly thinking rape could possibly have been what you meant when you so obvs were darkly hinting at….powerpoints! Of course you were. Also, I’m the Queen of the Moon.
Setting that horseshit aside, I am baffled that anyone thinks this dude ‘won’ with getting free publicity. As has been pointed out many times, 1) he is the sort of person who will retroactively declare ANY result a win condition, and 2) having the world find out you are living in your mom’s basement is not exactly a great result for someone who tries to project a Study Alpha Lone Wolf persona.
Thank you, Jake.
@neverjaunty: You might want to take a quick glance at your own privilege. I’m asexual, yet I live in a society which (a) is inundated with sex, (b) constantly comes up with new ways of referring to it, and (c) treats it as a given that everybody thinks about it to a great extent, meaning (d) “that’s a sexual innuendo” is a reasonable conclusion to draw from many vague statements. As such, it takes an active effort on my part to avoid making unintentional references to sexual activities. That effort sometimes fails. And when it does fail, the resulting failure of communication is 100% my fault because I’m the oddball who doesn’t treat sexual references as a common point of reference in thought and stuff. I’d appreciate if you could accept the retraction, clarification, and apology that follows without assuming I’m allosexual and my accidental implication was thus intentional and malicious.
Jake, I took it not as an allusion to rape per se, but to violence, left unspecified. Which is STILL unacceptable. The point isn’t whether or not it was a “sexual” innuendo, it’s the whole turn about is fair play aspect. When discussing unacceptable actions like rape or assault, turn about is NOT fair play. We condemn threats of rape and violence because they are wrong in and of themselves. They do not become OK just because they’re being aimed at someone who uses them themselves. There are much better ways to criticize people like that.
Except allusions to such are commonplace (such as here). Only rape is considered exempt from that rule, and the previous comments objected specifically to the prospect of a rape threat as such.
OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE, LET IT GO. YOU FUCKED UP. YOU APOLOGIZED. NOW STOP.
Yes, I ran afoul of a custom (apparently) unique to Pharyngula comment threads. I apologized. I’m happy to let it go if you are. Then danielhenschel commented to further elaborate on the nature of that custom and I replied. Should they (or anyone else) post again, I may potentially reply again.
Specifically, danielhenschel commented on the nature of the custom in question, and I replied on that subject. I’m not enough of a regular to be immediately familiar with the various customs, so I’m stuck either asking about them or just hoping I don’t run afoul of them in the future.
Or something.
It’s late and I’m tired and can’t muster the coherence to express anything properly. Sorry.