This Is What It Comes Down To

Toronto Terrorist’s Motivations Start To Become Clear

So it turns out that Alek Minassian, the man who drove a van into a crowd in Toronto yesterday, killing ten people (mostly women, as was his intention) was indeed a terrorist of sorts.  No, not Muslim, not Christian, incel:

Toronto Terrorist Deliberately Targeted Women

Incel Terrorism: Alek Minassian, Alleged Killer Of Ten In Toronto Van Attack Was Inspired By Elliott Rodger

Incels Hail Toronto Van Driver Who Killed 10 As A New Elliott Rodger, Talk Of Future Acid Attacks And Mass Rapes

For those who didn’t follow that first link, “incel” means “involuntarily celibate”.  Yes, there’s actually an online movement of people who feel oppressed because they can’t get laid.  Why yes, they’re almost all white men.  Why do you ask?

Incels have built up an elaborate alternate reality where they themselves are hideous (when you see pictures, most are pretty ordinary-looking.  They just have ridiculous standards – there are whole conversations about wrist thickness), and thus doomed to never have sex ever, because society is prejudiced against ugly white men more than anyone else.  This would just be ridiculous and pathetic if they didn’t spend all of their time working themselves up into a frothing hatred of “Chads” (sexually-active men) and “Stacies” (sexually-active women, also known as “Femoids” and “Roasties” [known as such because labia allegedly look like roast beef], who are assumed to deliberately deny incels the sex they deserve out of spite), hero-worshiping Elliott Rodger and planning their revenge on the world that has so cruelly cast them out.

Because Alek Minassian is a white man, the media will try to fit him into the “mentally ill lone wolf” narrative.  And he may indeed be mentally ill, but that’s not why he did this.  He’s a terrorist.  But because his goal – his and his movement’s – is primarily to terrorize women, he won’t be called that.

The Unforgiving Minute

Powerful stuff. And very important to hear.

Longreads

Laurie Penny | Longreads | November 2017 | 12 minutes (3,175 words)

“I’m sick of being asked to suffer so a man can grow.”

– Alexandra Petri

“Everyone. Fucking. Knew.”

– Scott Rosenberg

This is actually happening.

The so-called “revelations” about endemic male sexual aggression in Hollywood, in the media, in politics, in the tech world, and in communities large and small have not stopped, despite every conceivable effort to dismiss, discredit, shame, and belittle the survivors coming forward to demand a different world. The most uncomfortable revelation is the fact that none of this, really, was that revelatory.

A great many people knew. Maybe they didn’t know all of it, but they knew enough to feel tainted by a complicity that hobbled their compassion.

It turns out that this isn’t about individual monsters. It never was. This is about structural violence, about a culture that decided long ago that…

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Tough Girls Essay Up At Author Page

Tough Girls, Class Differences and Rape Culture has been added to the Reviews and Essays page at my author site.

 

That ex-Reed College student who wouldn’t shut up about rape has been arrested for sexual abuse, harassment

What a shock. I wonder if this story becomes big national news.

we hunted the mammoth

Jeremiah True, birds

Hey, remember that Reed College student who somehow got national attention for being booted from a class discussion section because he wouldn’t shut up about rape? The guy that right-wing news outlets — including The National Review and the New York Post — heralded as a martyr to free speech, even though it was clear to anyone who looked into the story even a little bit that the guy in question was a bit … off?

Well, Katie Baker at Buzzfeed now reports that Mr. True, now an ex-Reed College student, “was arrested on Thursday by the Portland, Oregon police for alleged sex abuse, harassment, and disorderly conduct” after, er, behaving inappropriately at a girls’ rugby game.

As Baker explains,

According to an employee at Rugby Oregon, a youth rugby organization based in Portland, True was arrested for disrupting a high school girls’ rugby practice. He was restrained by a…

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Tough Girls, Class Differences and Rape Culture (Trigger Warning)

Salander was not like any normal person. She had a rudimentary knowledge of the law—it was a subject she had never had occasion to explore—and her faith in the police was generally exiguous. For her the police were a hostile force who over the years had put her under arrest or humiliated her. The last dealing she had had with the police was in May of the previous year when she was walking past Götgatan on her way to Milton Security. She suddenly found herself facing a visor-clad riot police officer. Without the slightest provocation on her part, he had struck her on the shoulders with his baton. Her spontaneous reaction was to launch a fierce counterattack, using a Coca-Cola bottle that she had in her hand. The officer turned on his heel and ran off before she could injure him. Only later did she find out that “Reclaim the Streets” was holding a demonstration farther down the road.

Visiting the offices of those visor-clad brutes to file a report against Nils Bjurman for sexual assault did not even cross her mind. And besides—what was she supposed to report? Bjurman had touched her breasts. Any officer would take one look at her and conclude that with her miniature boobs, that was highly unlikely. And if it had actually happened, she should be proud that someone had even bothered. And the part about sucking his dick—it was, as he had warned her, her word against his, and generally in her experience the words of other people weighed more heavily than hers. The police were not an option.

She left Bjurman’s office and went home, took a shower, ate two sandwiches with cheese and pickles, and then sat on the worn-out sofa in the living room to think.

An ordinary person might have felt that her lack of reaction had shifted the blame to her—it might have been another sign that she was so abnormal that even rape could evoke no adequate emotional response.

Her circle of acquaintances was not large, nor did it contain any members of the sheltered middle class from the suburbs. By the time she was eighteen, Salander did not know a single girl who at some point had not been forced to perform some sort of sexual act against her will. Most of these assaults involved slightly older boyfriends who, using a certain amount of force, made sure that they had their way. As far as Salander knew, these incidents had led to crying and angry outbursts, but never to a police report.

In her world, this was the natural order of things. As a girl she was legal prey, especially if she was dressed in a worn black leather jacket and had pierced eyebrows, tattoos, and zero social status.

There was no point whimpering about it.

On the other hand, there was no question of Advokat Bjurman going unpunished. Salander never forgot an injustice, and by nature she was anything but forgiving.

– From The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

I was in a bookstore, flipping through a copy of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo when I first came upon this passage.

I’d heard about Dragon Tattoo’s notorious rape scenes (and equally notorious rape-revenge scene), but I’d decided to brave it anyway. I’ve since picked up a copy, and added it to my stack of books I need to read – I’ll get to it one of these days – but that one passage struck so much of a chord in me that I need to talk about it now instead of later.

The 5 Creepiest Details from GQ’s Long-Awaited Account of A Voice for Men’s Conference Last Summer

Jesus Christ.

*Takes a moment to gain composure*

You really should take a few minutes and read the whole thing, but if you only have time to check out the high points, this is what you need to see.

we hunted the mammoth

A Voice for Men’s Paul Elam: Still not ready for his closeup

A few days before alleged “men’s human rights” website A Voice for Men held its first convention last summer, the site’s founder and head boy Paul Elam put up a post imploring the alleged human rights activists planning to attend the event not to go around calling women bitches and whores and cunts, because the news media would be there, and this might make his little human rights movement look bad.

I’m paraphrasing here; Elam was a teensy bit more euphemistic, telling his followers that anyone caught “trash-talking women, men, making violent statements … anything that can be used against us” would get a very stern talking-to and, if they persisted, would be asked to leave.

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Attention Buzzfeed readers: Here’s more, much more, about the charming Paul Elam

This contains further details on the previous post’s useful information.

we hunted the mammoth

Paul Elam, saying something terrible, probably.

For those coming here from the excellent Buzzfeed article on Paul Elam, here are some posts of mine that will give you an even fuller picture of this not only sleazy but dangerous man and the little army of fanatical assholes he has assembled to pester and often outright harass (mostly) women online.

Start here:

Paul Elam of A Voice for Men: In His Own Words

Aside from some of the information Buzzfeed found out about him, nothing is more damning to Elam than his own words.

Here are some posts on Elam’s  peculiar approach to “activism,” which generally involves harassing individual women.

7 Tactics of Highly Effective Harassers: How A Voice for Men’s Internet Hate Machine works

Elam falsely accuses a random woman of trashing applications from white men while working for a college admissions office.

Elam Launches a Hate Campaign Against a…

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Stop what you’re doing, and GO READ THE BUZZFEED EXPOSE OF A VOICE FOR MEN’S PAUL ELAM. (SPOILER: He’s even worse than you think)

This contains useful information.

we hunted the mammoth

Paul Elam complaining that the media treats him like the terrible person he is.

If you’re a regular, or semi-regular, or even just an occasional reader of this blog, you need to stop reading this post right now and read Buzzfeed’s astonishing expose of A Voice for Men’s Paul Elam instead.

SPOILER ALERT: He’s an even bigger hypocrite than you think he is.

Here’s the link. Right here. Click on it now. Click. Now. Click.

If you need a bit more convincing: Buzzfeed’s long and meticulous examination of alleged “men’s human rights” activist Elam, written by Adam Serwer and Katie Baker, delves deep into Paul’s often sordid personal history, including his drug use, his numerous failed marriages, and the alternately depressing and infuriating story of the daughter he abandoned, who forgave and reunited with him as an adult, and who is now estranged from him again.

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Rock of Ages and the Deconstruction of the Nice Guy ™

On January 18, Rock of Ages will take its final bows as a Broadway show. In honor of the occasion, I’ve decided to finally write this essay, which has been sitting on my back burner pretty much since this blog was created.

Before we get started, I’d like to make one thing clear: this essay is not about the 2012 film. I’ve never seen the film.

You see, I have a deep and abiding love for the Rock of Ages stage musical.  I first saw it during a very difficult time in my life, when my marriage to College Sweetheart (referred to in that link as The Girl From Washington Heights) was unraveling and professionally, I was swinging back and forth between temp work and unemployment.  Rock of Ages’ colorful, escapist fun and its City of Dreams message helped me through, silly as that may sound.  I listened to that soundtrack over and over that winter, and other times I was low.

So when the film first came out, I checked its Wikipedia article (I have a weakness for spoilers, so sue me), and learned that the filmmakers had replaced the urban developer from the musical with Catherine Zeta-Jones’s character, a self-righteous champion of censorship who was defeated through the power of slut-shaming.

I was.  Not.  Happy.

While I understand that a story may require changes as it transitions from one medium to another (very few people were saddened by Tom Bombadil’s absence from the Lord of the Rings movies), I was…mildly put off by a character and a plotline who seemed to be added because the original wasn’t misogynist enough.

In other words, I have vowed never to see the movie, and I curse the names of everyone involved for ruining something that  should have immortalized the show I loved and brought it to a much-deserved wider audience.

Anyway. With that out of the way, to business: