• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Seven dead in drive by California shootings

One Tenth said:
Well, as a short version, I'd say that PUAs use existing and traditional gender norms in order to be more successful in dating women, This ranges from mild and mostly benelovent ways such as getting in shape, dressing better, and being more confident, to outright disturbingly misgynistic ways that treat women as objects and prizes.

The Red Pill, well, basically are traditionalists as far as I can tell. They seem to think that women are spiteful children that need a firm hand guiding them in all things.

The MRA (or MRM) is probably the broadest of the three. I'd say their two main features are a dislike of traditional gender roles, and anti-feminism (how much the feminism is straw feminism can vary a fair bit).

Anyways, if you see rhetoric along the lines of "alpha male", "man up", or an obsession with being worthy to date women--yeah, that's pretty much antethetical to MRA stuff.
Click to expand...

Seems to me like two splinters or modes of thought within one tradition of ideas (if you can even call it that), and I would bet that the overlap - and dissent - is significant. Seems to me that there should be some umbrella term.

And when he talked about being "the alpha" it was obviously with a sense of resentment over those gender roles.
 
Media saturation only encourages another borderline case from using his American freedom to gun people down, and enjoy fifteen minutes of postmortem infamy.
 
Doghouse Reilly said:
These feelings, combined with mental illness, were enough to push him to do this. I think he was genuinely frustrated and confused about why he couldn't get a girlfriend. I don't think he started out with the assumption that any naked woman should have been rubbing against his body.
If you look at his Internet postings on various forums (which I have, because I was familiar with this guy before he became a murderer), other posters would normally tell him that his views and atitudes were really disturbing and messed up.
Click to expand...

I'm of the view that even mentally disturbed people can be very influenced by ideas; I don't subscribe to the view that events like these are deterministic. I think he found an ideology that allowed him to blame other people for his failures and intensified those feelings. He may have found something else had it not been for misogynism, but it's difficult to say.

For an extreme comparison: If he had believed that Jews were to blame for his failures and subscribed to World Jewry youtube channels, even if none of those actually advocated murdering Jews, don't you think it would be fair to say that he was influenced by the antisemitism movement?

You can't really place the blame for the event on anyone but him and possibly a system that failed to care for him properly, but I still think it is important and interesting to show how some movements attracts and reinforces the ideas of disturbed people.
 
Doghouse Reilly said:
If he did find solace amongst MRA's (and all of the responses to posts of his I've seen of his online have included denouncements of his attitudes, not support), it seems to have been after he had already developed these frustrations, not as a formative influence. Of course there is no way to know for certain.
Click to expand...

I haven't been going and reading the guy's posts, but if it's true as you say that most of them were denounced on the forums he frequented, that's a fair assessment.

I have noticed just by looking now that there are suddenly a lot of folks in various places starting to very strongly emphasize the differences between MRAs and PUAs. While I'm not sure that I agree the two are polar opposites as some have claimed, I am nonetheless interested. I'll concede that I grouped many of these folks together under the title "misogynist" - and I'm not yet convinced that's unfair - but I'm also curious about how these two groups are really so different.
 
Well, it wouldn't be the first time movements with very similar views and overlaps try to emphasize (or even exaggerate) their differences.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
And when he talked about being "the alpha" it was obviously with a sense of resentment over those gender roles.
Click to expand...

As near as I can tell, the idea of "alpha" males versus "beta" males in humans was adopted by PUAs to designate the difference between men who get to have lots of sex with many women, and those who don't - and by extension, actions which are likely to lead one to one result or the other.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
Seems to me like two splinters or modes of thought within one tradition of ideas (if you can even call it that), and I would bet that the overlap - and dissent - is significant. Seems to me that there should be some umbrella term.
Click to expand...

Really? One is opposed to traditional gender roles, the other heartily supports it. I guess there's overlap in that they both talk about gender roles.
 
Checkmite said:
Be careful. If you're about to insist that MRA "talking points" are confined solely to custodial rights or female-on-male domestic violence to the exclusion of hating on women that won't have sex, I suggest you take a look at what contributors to MRA forums actually spend their forum posts talking about most.
Click to expand...

You're willing to apply the same logic to the statements of "radical feminists," right?

Be careful. If you're about to insist that radical feminist "talking points" are confined solely to gender equality or addressing sex-based crimes to the exclusion of hating on men, I suggest you take a look at what contributors to radical feminist forums, Twitter and Tumblr actually spend their forum posts talking about most.
Click to expand...
 
Checkmite said:
I have noticed just by looking now that there are suddenly a lot of folks in various places starting to very strongly emphasize the differences between MRAs and PUAs. While I'm not sure that I agree the two are polar opposites as some have claimed, I am nonetheless interested. I'll concede that I grouped many of these folks together under the title "misogynist" - and I'm not yet convinced that's unfair - but I'm also curious about how these two groups are really so different.
Click to expand...

It's funny, I've noticed an opposing trend -- a lot of people trying to conflate the two. I think there are some very, very tenuous similarities, in that both groups focus on gender roles assigned to men and dislike them. PUAs try to exploit those roles to get sex, and MRAs try to dismantle those roles. Kinda disturbing that PUAs have been more successful.

As far as the red pill goes, they seem to actually want and encourage the traditional male gender role. That's just plain messed up.
 
One Tenth said:
Really? One is opposed to traditional gender roles, the other heartily supports it. I guess there's overlap in that they both talk about gender roles.
Click to expand...


You really think that PUA's support "traditional gender roles"? I was always under the impression that traditional female gender roles referred to things like getting married and being in kitchens. I was also under the impression that conforming to traditional male roles like being married and supporting a family is the last thing PUA's are interested in.
 
Last edited:
In the above quote I was referring to TRP vs MRM, but I didn't make that clear, entirely on me.

I view traditional gender roles as the agent/subject dichotomy. Men are viewed as the actors, women as the acted upon. PUAs very much embrace this in their narrow field of sexual relationships. Their main focus is on how to approach women, to prove that they are worthy to women, and then to have sex rewarded as a prize.

Edited to add: Do you think we are getting too far off topic? If so we could end the conversation after your response, or perhaps move to another thread.
 
Last edited:
I don't think it has to be off-topic. If a thread about a killing can turn into a gun control thread because the guy used a gun, then a thread about a killing can turn into a thread about misogynists (or those considered misogynists by some, at least) because the guy cited misogynist views as his motivation.

If it's true that the traditional gender roles that MRA's are opposed to are those you mention - merely the male actor/female subject generalization - then their opposition to feminism becomes complicated, because feminists tend not only to oppose that same generalization, but most of the anecdotes they give in which they complain about the behavior of men, are cases in which they feel men were acting or attempting to act upon a woman or women, in an illustration of those very roles.

ETA obviously new developments in this particular case ought still be discussed here, such as Unabogie just posted.
 
Last edited:
SimplyAghast said:
I respect the proposition. I guess it's just an unpleasant inevitability that some people use such a terrible tragedy to draw ideological battle lines and to use it as a cudgel with which to pound their "enemies."

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/05/24/the-perfect-guy-the-supreme-gentleman/
Click to expand...
The thing is, "Wow, that's horrible" doesn't have much discussion value in itself. Being able to relate an issue to other issues and how it fits into a larger picture is key for any discussion.

It's another thing to keep bringing a tragedy up in tangentially related discussions to score points a la Benghazi, of course. But to discuss ideologies and movements surrounding a perpetrator in a tragedy, well, that's pretty much what you discuss apart from stating the facts, isn't it?
 
SimplyAghast said:
I respect the proposition. I guess it's just an unpleasant inevitability that some people use such a terrible tragedy to draw ideological battle lines and to use it as a cudgel with which to pound their "enemies."

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/05/24/the-perfect-guy-the-supreme-gentleman/
Click to expand...

I don't think that's fair. The person who made this about misogyny was the killer. How can his views on women be divorced from discussion of the issue when he, himself, described them as his motivation for the killing?
 
TimCallahan said:
Right, that's all we need a bunch of college students, particularly eighteen year olds,....
Click to expand...
The victims were college students and/or 18 years old? I'm not seeing this information anywhere yet. Where are you getting yours

Ranb
 
William Parcher said:
I'm surprised that the Asperger Syndrome (Autism) isn't being discussed in this thread.
Click to expand...

....And this was my point. He was clearly VERY mentally ill.

Why are many of us so quick to blame this on whatever ideology he held when HE WAS CLEARLY VERY MENTALLY ILL?

I think it's very safe to say that people with very serious mental problems kill more people on average than guys who go to YouTube to try and figure out how to get women to like them.

(Edit: Oh, it should go without saying, but I don't mean to say that people who have Asperger's are necessarily VERY MENTALLY ILL or likely killers. I have worked with a number of folks who have that concern. They're brilliant and good-hearted...just not the best with social cues.)
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom