It’s time for an updated edition of Susan Faludi’s Backlash
Witness the recent mass murder of women at a gym in Pennsylvania by a man obsessed with his inability to get women to sleep with him. Also witness the media response, most of which has focused on how unhappy the poor man was (you know, when I’m unhappy I cry on a friend’s shoulder, or mope, or have a drink – I have yet to decide that murdering strangers would be an appropriate response to unhappiness). Witness the killer’s blog, which was full of misogynistic ranting about how evil women were for rejecting him, and fantasies about hurting them. Witness in particular the response from some men who seem to consider this guy some sort of hero.
And then let’s remember the young man who drove his car into a crowd of pedestrians in Akihabara in Tokyo and then stabbed a bunch of people. Half a world away, a 23 year difference in age, and yet an oddly similar fixation on the idea of rejection by women as somehow tied in with generally low social status.
There was also the Virginia Tech killer, whose manifesto contained strikingly similar ideas about how he felt mistreated by women.
What do these three men have in common? A deep and disturbing anger against women and a strange fixation of the idea of women’s not wanting to sleep with them as the source of all their personal problems (compounded in the Akihabara case by the fact that the killer was about to lose his job, another classic spur to male status anxiety).
It’s a creepy syndrome, and it seems to be becoming more and more common. Why are so many men so very angry with women? Where does this fixation come from, this weird sense of entitlement to sex and attention from women?
That’s the other thing. On the rare occasions the media bothers to pay attention to this syndrome, they usually focus on the men’s complaints about not being able to get laid. That’s not really all that’s going on with these men, though – if you look at their own words, their frustration isn’t focused simply on not being able to get laid. What comes up time after time is the idea that women owe them attention. They don’t just want sex, they want all the things that (they think) go along with sex – a woman who will love them unconditionally and strive to make them happy, a sense of themselves as “real men” as defined by the fact that they’re able to “get” women, the respect of their peers. They feel entitled to these things, and they’re furious at women for not playing along.
Pretty much any woman can tell you within reading a few sentences of anything any of those men have written why they were so unsuccessful at “getting” women. Those men are, not to mince words, f*cking scary. Their maniacal obsession with “getting” women in order to prove themselves, their creepy sense of entitlement to women’s bodies and time and attention, the overall sense that they don’t quite grasp the concept that women are actual people…most women, getting even a whiff of that attitude, will run away as fast as they can. Which is, in fact, a wise decision.
The question remains though, why are there so many men like that, and what can we do about it?
I would argue that the underlying thought processes that lead men to that place, of seeing women as objects that they’re entitled to whose non-compliance deserves to be punished, are actually commonplace in most cultures and on the rise in many. Witness the fact that someone actually wrote a book called A Natural History of Rape, which by it’s very nature and framing suggests that rape is somewhat not the fault of the rapist since it may be an evolved behavior (just imagine for a moment if someone wrote a book called A Natural History of Genocide what the reaction would be). Witness the rise of evolutionary psychology (formerly known as sociobiology, and no more scientifically credible in its current incarnation than in the last one), the entire purpose of which seems to be to defend the idea that women’s lesser social status is natural and justified and that men can’t help being jerks to women.
The question is, then, what we can do about it. Allowing the mentality behind what can eventually evolve into a psychosis to permeate our cultures is dangerous. It should not be the case that so many men are walking around thinking that they have a natural right to women’s time, attention and bodies, and that if these things are not forthcoming the problem is not their own shortcomings but women’s refusal to do what they’re “supposed” to do. As long as that thinking is commonplace we’re going to see a lot more cases of angry, frustrated men going into public places and killing every woman they can find.
In fact, it would seem that some in the MRA movement are actually encouraging that very thing in the hopes that the world will see the manifestos the killers leave behind and somehow compel women to do whatever it is that they think women ought to be forced to do (frankly this isn’t entirely clear, given that the men in question are often both incoherent and prone to contradicting themselves from one sentence to another).
Why do so many men think that they have a right to women? And what can we do to turn the ones that haven’t gone completely off the deep end yet around, before the next time that one of them decides to vent his frustrated rage on a room full of strangers?
Read this, as to why there is a huge anti-feminist (i.e. anti-misandry) backlash brewing among normal men and normal women (who also suffer from the misandry masking as feminism).
Left-wing Women have a huge and inflated sense of entitlement regardign money that a man earning. Women are always devising schemes to forcibly steal a man’s money, either through taxes, divorce court, or other immoral practices.
That is why left-wing women hate Sarah Palin so much. She represents what feminism should have become, rather than the sordid misandry that it presently is. That is why lefto-women hate her.
Nobody considers this guy to be a ‘hero’. The point is, America has become a female-dominated society, with many men who feel disenfranchised. Violence is wrong, but ignoring the deeper problem will only cause more suffering.
Why do so many men think that they have a right to women?
Men have no right to women. Women also have no right to financial support from men, and women have no right to safety either.
You didn’t understand the Roissy article. The author is saying that if the man had ‘Game’ skills, he would have had a better life, AND those women would still be alive.
So a win-win all around.
But your inverted morality could no see this. That is why you are part of the problem. A large part.
If you took the time to read this guys entire screed and watch his youtube house-tour, you would notice that his real attitude was the opposite of “entitled” towards women. He did NOT feel entitled to anything from a woman just because he was a man. He clearly felt that a womans love and sexy time were things that guys needed to earn.
In his video and parts of his screed, he is obviously declaring: “Look at my nice house, look at my decent job, I am in shape. People tell me I am “nice”. I thought that is what I was supposed to do. That is what women say they want. But they all ignore me – and have since i was 30 – while fornicating with an entirely different sort of guy right in front of my face.”
Sure we must have seemed creepy for the last several years but there is zero evidence he was always thus. And it is so easy to imagine how 2 decades of involuntary sexual frustration would inflame just about any “issues” he might have started off with.
Beyond all that, what is the best way to minimize a recurrence? Teaching guys like him to “respect” women more seems to me like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. His main problem was that he put them too high on a pedestal to begin with. He could not relate to their simple not-so-special animal nature.
Notice he never paid prostitutes. He certainly could have afforded it. Lots of guys in his situation have done so. Apparently he did not because he idealized young women TOO much to go there.
This man felt he deserved sex and love from women — felt he’d EARNED it by working out, being “nice” (in his opinion), and having a good job. He felt so strongly about this that he shot and killed these women for not giving him what he felt he deserved. By presuming that it’s possible to earn women’s attraction, as though our emotions are some kind of commodity that can be purchased, and if he paid and didn’t get the goods he was being cheated, he was taking an entitled attitude.
I find it very hard to believe that he refused to go to prostitutes because he thought women were too good for that. When’s the last time you talked to a man who was opposed to prostitution because it was demeaning to women and not because it’s morally wrong and besides, ew, whores are icky? Knowing your ilk, if you have ever met such a person, you probably accused him of trying to suck up to evil, bitchy feminists.
By the way, by giving this deeply troubled man a false sense of hope about his chances of being able to attract women if he could only use the right canned lines, the PUA community most likely contributed to the feelings of despair that led him commit this heinous act when those techniques didn’t work for him. Good going, guys.