The Giffords shooting: Misogyny has consequences

Reason #1538 it's not such a good idea to spend time online nursing your resentments towards the opposite sex because no one from that sex seems to want to have sex with you: Because that kind of, sort of, makes you a little bit like Jared Loughner.

The Wall Street Journal managed to track down what are apparently some comments Loughner made on a gaming site; they're full of his usual conspiratorial nonsense (his lunatic theories on grammar and currency) but they're also, as the Journal notes, "peppered with displays of misogyny." One posting

titled "Why Rape," ... said women in college enjoyed being raped. "There are Rape victims that are under the influence of a substance. The drinking is leading them to rape. The loneliness will bring you to depression. Being alone for a very long time will inevitably lead you to rape."

This is the dark side of the "incel" mindset. (That is, those who turn their "involuntarily celibate" state into an identity.)

Another time, the Journal reports, Loughner

started a thread titled "Talk, Talk, Talking about Rejection." He solicited stories of rejection by the opposite sex. The next day he wrote, "Its funny...when..they say lets go on a date about 3 times..and they dont....go..." Three days later, he wrote, "Its funny when your 60 wondering......what happen at 21."

There is other evidence that Loughner nursed anger towards and hatred of women and authority figures: he apparently scrawled the phrases "die bitch" and "die cops" on a letter he'd gotten from congresswoman Giffords.

As Amanda Marcotte points out, there are a lot of people out there who've responded with anger at the very notion "that misogyny might play a role in the choice of a young man to shoot a powerful woman in the head ... ."

But the fact is that misogyny has consequences, and one of its most common and most predictable consequences is violence towards women. Misogyny plays a role, as Marcotte notes, even when the perpetrator of this violence is "crazy."

What I’m seeing here is that Loughner, mental illness or no, completely absorbed society’s teachings about male entitlement and female sinfulness, that men have a right to have needs filled at women’s expense, and that women give up their rights to bodily autonomy if they do things deemed unladylike, like have sex or drink alcohol.

And just as those who spew hateful political rhetoric -- filled with talk of guns and targets and "second amendment solutions" to political "problems" -- shouldn't be surprised when someone takes that rhetoric seriously, so those who spew misogyny online shouldn't be surprised when someone acts on that misogyny and attacks a woman. As Marcotte puts it,

just because someone has a mental illness rarely means that he’s completely unaware of the world around him.  Loughner’s ability with a gun or his thoughts on rape didn’t spring fully formed from his brain, but are the product of an individual interacting with a specific environment.

Those who contribute to that toxic environment -- whether they're Sarah Palin talking about "reloading" or some random woman-hater talking gleefully online about bashing "bitches" -- share in the responsibility when someone pulls a gun and shoots down a female politician he's convinced himself is a "bitch." 

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Campus creep out

Damn you, accursed temptress!

In a discussion of rape on campus over on Love-shy.com, one of the regulars, a college student, complains that people see him as "creepy," for no good reason. His tale of injustice begins:

Whenever I'm on campus, I'm eyed by the security guards. Not because I'm dangerous, but because I'm MALE.

Being male and a college student seems to be a crime of sorts.

Let's stop right here. Bullshit. On most campuses, guys make up half the population. Dude, unless you've accidentally wandered onto the main quad of Wellesley College with your dick hanging out, or you're otherwise acting weirdly or suspiciously, campus security guards aren't going to give you a second look. Either you're lying, or you're imagining things, or you aren't telling us the whole story.

Back to the comment:

What about the women who taunt the men sexually? I'm not saying that women are asking to be raped, but a LOT of women give blowjobs to professors for higher grades, and trade sexual favors, all because they're HOT.

Uh, ok, that's not actually true. Unless by "a LOT" you mean "a tiny number." But it is an ... interesting assumption. Also, starting any sentence with the phrase "I'm not saying that women are asking to be raped" is generally a bad sign, in the same way that Richard Nixon saying "I am not a crook" was a bad sign.

On with the rest of the comment:

And since I'm not HOT, I'm automatically seen as a creepy rapist? Fuck that shit. I respect women, I have NEVER made an inappropriate comment towards women. I'm also afraid to express myself sexually, for fear of it taken the wrong way.

Thank you, feminist hags, for making me into something I'm not: a criminal!

Ok. Let's break this down. You "respect women," yet you complain about them "taunt[ing] ... men sexually," and assume that "a LOT" of them are getting good grades just because they give blow jobs to profs. You've "NEVER made an inappropriate comment towards women," yet given a little bit of internet anonymity you're happy to call feminists "hags," a gender-specific insult if ever there were one.

I don't know. Could it be that women -- and, heck, maybe even a few security guards -- find you creepy because, uh, you're walking around angry all the time, full of hatred and resentment towards half the population?

Just a guess.

EDITED TO ADD: More on the "creep" issue here. 

Love-shyness and the perpetual resentment machine

She's so smug, that Mona Lisa!

Reading Love-shy.com, a forum for self-described incels (that is, the "involuntarily celibate") and other "love-shy" guys, is a depressing experience. On the one hand, there are a lot of guys there who are genuinely hurting due to social awkwardness, depression, and other serious maladies that would be better treated by a psychiatrist and/or a good therapist than by talking to other equally miserable guys on an online forum.

And on the other hand, there is so much seething resentment among the regulars, not only of those women who have rejected them but women in general. The complaint is always the same: women only like "bad boys" and thugs, and refuse to date "nice guys." That is, guys like those who post on Love-Shy.com.

In one recent, fairly typical, thread, an unhappy "nice guy" reports that a girl he had a crush on (and who, a year ago, had turned him down) is now pregnant:

And she lists herself as single [on Facebook], which means that she was knocked up by some loser. That could have been MY kid; instead, I'm left here wondering why she followed the stereotype, when I thought she was so different.

I swear, all women are the same. They ALL follow the same patterns. Even someone who considers themselves an outcast or eccentric themselves, they ALL follow the same patterns. Her boyfriends were always extremely good looking, too.

This is another example of a woman who is nerdy/geeky, and doesn't like the nice guys. Pathetic, really pathetic.

So her crime is that ... she is attracted to guys that she thinks are, er, attractive? Instead of a self-described "nice guy" who seems to think she has a duty to be attracted to him, and who is obsessive enough to still be nursing a grudge about her rejection of him a year earlier?

Others pipe up with their support:

This should be of no surprise to you. She clearly is a quasi-eugenicist that deemed your genes unworthy of propagation. She subsequently mated with another guy who had desirable genes so that she could have the best possible offspring. Classic eugenics, classic female hypergamy.

Yep. Women who are attracted to the attractive are "eugenicists," essentially little Hitlers at heart. "Classic female hypergamy," by the way, is basically a fancy way of suggesting that all women are essentially gold-diggers and/or alpha-dog seekers, going for men who are older and richer than they are or otherwise at the top of the heap. Get used to the term: MRAs, MGTOWs, and Incels use it constantly. (I should probably add it to my post on the lingo of the "manosphere.")

Another commenter picks up on the "women are eugenicists" theme:

If a woman is ever talking to you and the words "nice" or "sweet" comes out of her mouth, you then know that she would rather see you hanging dead from a rope before dating/sleeping with you. She wouldn't give you 2 dollars to save your life.

Women are not just turned off by nice, sweet guys. Women hate and despise them. They want them dead, they cannot stand undesirable genes.

A third puts it equally bluntly:

If you're ugly, women want you to die of a horribly painful death, and she would LOVE to torture you so that you suffer as much as possible.

Still another pipes up with a story of being similarly "victimized" by his "oneitis" -- that is, the girl he's completely obsessed with:

She always says I'm a lovely sweet guy. We also have loads in common, in terms of values, interests, etc. Now I know these are all the kiss of death. Girls don't really want these things (sweetness, kindness, loveliness). They want to spread the alpha male genes. ... I am the victim of classic female hypergamy too. She's with a doctor!

Meanwhile, another suggests that the OP is probably better off on his own, given that most women are lying, cheating whores:

you are used for attention whoring when the bad boy did all the fucking. Just get over asap man, can you imagine what would happen if she were your wife? More than likely she will cheat. Todays sad reality is if you are a shy, introverted guy you will always feel the threat of cheating even with your wife every fucking day of your life.

The only healthy thing in the whole thread? The OP reports that he's deleted the pregnant ex-crush from his Facebook friends list.

You know what? Life is unfair. Love is tough. Some people are better looking than other people. How many guys want to be Don Draper, minus, perhaps, the constant boozing and fairly regular assholism? Probably every man who watches Mad Men, and then some. How many look like Don Draper? A tiny fraction of a percent of the former group. There's a hilarious eposide of Between Two Ferns, Zach Galifianakis' fake chat show, in which Zach confronts Jon Hamm, the actor who plays Don Draper, with the fact of his astounding handsomeness:

Zach: "Does it make you sick when you look in the mirror to see how handsome you are and to know that people are disfigured? And don't you think you should think that?"

Jon: "I ... I've really never thought of it that way."

Zach: "You never thought, hey, uh, why is Jesus so cruel?"

Jon: "Well, I've thought that."

If it's any consolation, she can't really act.

So, yeah, some people have advantages in the world of love and sex. Attractive, outgoing, happy people generally fare better than unattractive, shy and unhappy people. (And it's not like the guys on Love-shy.com are all unattractive -- or that they have any great sympathy for women who aren't hotties.)  But even the beautiful people get their hearts broken sometimes. No one can simply have whoever they want. No one is entitled to have another person fall in love with them, or even just into bed. That is up to the other person. (See Hugo Schwytzer's recent post "the right to pursue, not the right to have," for more on this.) 

Yes, there's a difference between being rejected once in a while and being rejected all the time, or being simply so terrified by rejection you never even try to approach anyone. If you're depressed, desperate, awkward and needy, as many of the "love-shy" seem to be, you're going to repel most if not all of those you're attracted to. This fucking sucks. But it's life. The solution? Get some help, and get your shit together. Get your depression treated. (I've been on antidepressants for years; it's changed my fucking life.) Get your social anxiety treated. Talk to therapists abut your issues. Get lots of exercise. See a sex surrogate if necessary. I'm not saying any of these things to be insulting. I'm saying them because they will actually help.

Some things you shouldn't do? Embrace your (hopefully temporary) datelessness as a fucking IDENTITY. Spend all your time on a message board with others who've done the same thing. Cultivate your resentment of women for rejecting you, and receive validation from other guys for doing this. (Guess what? Just as most women can sniff out your desperation, they can also sniff out your resentment, and it's not an attractive quality.)

Or, finally, to assume that things are oh-so-easy for women seeking love and sex. If you're not aware of the problems women face in the world of dating, you're just not paying attention. Are there women who are always (whether they like it or not) followed by a small herd of lovesick men? Yes. Are there women who are 30-year-old virgins? Yes to that as well. Love is tough, but demonizing the opposite sex isn't good for anyone: you're creating a perpetual resentment machine.

And it won't get you laid.