Heavier Than Heaven

The fact that I can still vividly remember where-I-was-and-what-I-was-doing the first time I heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (and also where-I-was-and-what-I-was-doing when I learned of Kurt Cobain's suicide) is a measure of how powerfully the music of Nirvana moved me.  I may be a "baby boomer," but I've always identified, culturally at least, with the Generation Xers.

I've been observing the twentieth anniversary of Cobain's death by reading Charles Cross's "definitive" 2001 biography of Cobain, Heavier Than Heaven.  And trust me, this book is "heavy" in every sense of the word. 

There are no great revelations here:  Cobain was a sweet, sensitive child with artistic inclinations who grew into an incorrigible, depressed adolescent who was a complete pain in the ass to everyone who cared about him.  What ultimately (and narrowly) saved him from becoming a professional homeless person was his commitment to his music.  Cobain was, in fact, extraordinarily ambitious and driven.  He was cunning, manipulative, conflict-avoidant, self-mythologizing, and had no qualms about taking advantage of anyone who lent him a hand. 

None of which diminishes his musical legacy of course, or even makes this reader dislike him personally.  In fact, I am in admiration of his monomaniacal quest to achieve popular success.  The fact that this success did not, in the end, make him happy is the most tragic aspect of his life ("answered prayers" and all that).

Part of the reason I am finding the book an interesting, albeit predictable, read is that I have spent a lot of time in the places Cross describes.  In the early nineties, I even considered moving to Aberdeen -- probably because the rents were so incredibly cheap there and I briefly fancied the romance of living in a modern ruin.

Anyway, I'm developing a lesson built around Nirvana for one of my classes next week.  One of the perks of being a teacher is that I get to inflict my musical and literary tastes on my students (most of whom have never heard of Cobain, but all of whom will recognize the opening bars of "Smells Like Teen Spirit").

They Walk Amongst Us

I've spent some time musing over whether certain prominent "manospherians" are psychopaths or sociopaths.  I was recently referred to this link which distinguishes the two conditions. 

One of the differences appears to be that sociopaths tend to act out in controlled, premeditated ways, to indulge in "calculated or opportunistic violence," and are "often social predators."  Psychopaths, on the other hand, tend to be impulsive, and more likely to run afoul of law enforcement.  So I will continue to use the term "sociopathic" to describe many of the behaviors I have observed by reading the manosphere.

We are learning that sociopaths are more common than previously acknowledged, and they often function at very high levels.  I've read several articles or books in the past year written by people who identify as sociopaths.  There is even considerable interest in whether, and in what ways, sociopaths serve society or whether sociopathy is an evolutionarily advantageous trait.  It's a topic that the manosphereans themselves occasionally discuss, often with some anxiety.

Personally, I have known two people in my life that I suspect were sociopaths, one a (now deceased) member of my own family.  Intelligent sociopaths perform "normalcy" so well that in the context of superficial relationships, their sociopathy is not detectable.  So it is reasonable to assume that most of them walk amongst us unrecognized.

And that's probably true of many of the "manospherian" bloggers themselves. Some of the manospherian bloggers and their commentators make such chilling pronouncements, evince such utter lack of empathy and such endless wells of rage, that it's hard to deny they exhibit sociopathic tendencies.  Of course, they're doing so, in most cases, under the cloak of anonymity.  Part of the threat of being "doxxed" in this 'sphere is that the disparity between their online and offline personas is so great that they have much to lose by being attached to the opinions they fearlessly share online.  They are well aware that by being doxxed, they will be exposed as freaks, objects of scorn, pity, and fear, to the very people they depend on most.

Of course, despite the handles they hide behind, the active participants inevitably drop clues when they refer to their "real" lives, and from these scattered crumbs it's clear that some of them occupy positions of considerable authority and public trust.  (It's enough to keep a person up at night!)

On the other hand, the same anti-social traits that make them "scary" (or at least damned peculiar) as individuals also keep them immobilized as a social or political group.  As the recent frenzy of doxxing and smearing proves, the most popular bloggers, despite being charismatic enough to generate followers, cannot form the kinds of strong alliances that would allow them to organize an effective campaign or exert much influence on society in general.  They can only wreak havoc on each other, the unfortunate people in their immediate circle (i.e., spouses and children), or upon targets that they perceive are lone, weak, and unable to retaliate (although I think Paul Elam of AVfM may have seriously miscalculated when he decided to take on Prof. Mercier).

Is it possible that the "manosphere" is a symptom, not of some broad-seated social malaise, but of the internet giving the sociopaths who have always existed a loud (albeit rather impotent) "voice?" 

Note bene: Now I am in no way suggesting that everyone who has taken "the Red Pill" is sociopathic.  In fact, most of the traffic on those sites is probably coming from very young disaffected youth who are looking for answers, an outlet to safely vent their frustrations, or a forum in which to entertain their fantasies of dominance.  A recent reddit survey indicates that the majority of respondents who characterized themselves as MRAs are between the ages of 17-20, white, and, while politically "extremely conservative," are not religious. Is it overly optimistic to trust that as they gain experience, intelligence, and find their paths in life, they will wander away from these dark recesses and integrate themselves into the mainstream?

See also Is Roosh a Sociopath?

This Could Be Dangerous For Me

Here's a clip of Emily Davison throwing herself under the King's horse, an act of suicidal defiance that is credited with helping win the vote for women in the UK:

Studies Show Trolls Often Sadists

Well, that's hardly surprising, is it?

What surprised me is that that any psychological research had been done on internet trolls.  Here's a link to a Mother Jones report published a few weeks ago.

UPDATE:  And in related news, This Ruthless World explains why some people who make "stupid jokes" anonymously need to be identified and sharply brought to heel.

An Open Letter to Sunshine Mary

You may never see this, but I'll post anyway.

I know you gloated when I was doxxed and my name was smeared, and I know you think my blog is "batshit" (and you know I thought yours was too), but believe me when I say, with utmost sincerity, that I am sorry to read this attack on you.

Your attacker didn't reveal anything new to anyone, really.  He certainly didn't "prove" you were a fraud and he sure didn't prove you were "dangerous" or merited a full frontal assault of this nature.  By violating a basic tenet of internet discourse -- respecting people's rights to post anonymously, to have a voice on the internet without compromising their personal lives -- your attacker simply demonstrated once more his weak and ruthless character.  Anyone reading his post can see that he is motivated by envy of your success, self-hatred, and (I am sorry to point this out to a Red Pill Woman), his own deep-seated misogyny.

Believe it or not, I hope you'll come back.  Your blog was very popular and provided a lot of entertainment to people, regardless which side of the fence they were on.  

I won't promise to read what you write, and I can't promise that if I do read your posts I won't gleefully shred them to pieces, but I absolutely support your right to express your beliefs without fear of reprisal.   

CORRECTION:  SSM did not describe my blog as "batshit" (see comment below). Although if she had, it would be entirely within her rights to do so!

Sunshine Mary and I Have Something In Common

It's not simply that we're both emotionally labile middle aged bottle blondes who look at least ten years younger than our chronological ages. 

No, what Sunshine Mary and I have in common is that we're both absolutely flummoxed by the new technology. 

Really, old bags like Sunshine Mary and me have no business on the Internet because we can't for the life of us figure out how the darned thing works.  It's clearly all too much for our age-addled hamster brains to absorb.

When I read that the author of SunshineGary -- that arrogant sprout! -- had ridiculed SSM for having the internet skills of her 91 year old great-grandmother, I felt a certain pang of empathy for Mary.  After all, if I had known anything, I wouldn't have gotten doxxed, would I?  Some people are so mean, aren't they? Probably because they're jealous of our accumulated womanly wisdom. That's why I am going to take a leaf from Sunshine Mary's good book and start praying for them.

I didn't know Mary was renouncing her blogging addiction vocation until this morning, when I checked my oh-so-modest stats to discover a dozen readers popping in from a link on Sunshine Mary's blog.  Since I've only mentioned Miss Mary a couple of times*, I was puzzled.  Imagine my surprise when the link took me directly to her more "exclusive" Word Press blog in which she had posted an extremely lengthy and incoherent "farewell" to her most special fans.  Embedded in this byzantine (and to an "outsider," incomprehensible) post was a link to a comment an anonymous reader, a former acquaintance of Mary's,  had posted here on my (her words) "batshit blog" many moons ago.

It seems to have taken Mary a full day to figure out what she had done ("Oops!"), at which point she set her blog to "private," but the readers keep trickling in, now from a site called Get Off My Internets. 

If I'd known most of my traffic would come from people so hungry to read about Sunshine Mary (and JudgyBitch), I'd have blogged more about them.  

Lordy, lordy, the manosphere IS all about the red pill women, isn't it?
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* I just can't get into that Christian submissive red pill wife melodrama!  It's too kinky for a vanilla "hetero-flexible" feminist like me!

Trolling in the Manosphere

The other day I received an e-mail from a gentle reader who had just tumbled into the toxic waste dump that is the manosphere.  Specifically, she had found an article on Return of Kings by one "Raywolf" that purported to expose the cruel, bestial nature of womankind.  Although the article itself is horrible, it's pretty much run of the mill fodder for a website run by Roosh, and hardened veteran readers of the New Misogynists, like myself, will hardly raise an eyebrow.  This gentle reader, however, had then made the fatal error of reading the Comment Section.  (There is good reason that PZ Myers often implores his readers, "Don't read the comments!  Don't read the comments!")

But Gentle Reader had no way of knowing that she was proceeding into ever more dangerous terrain where no novice should venture without a seasoned guide (or at least a torch, a strong hand to hold, and a barf bag).  

She discovered comments by someone calling himself "Ruler" that disturbed even the other commentators since "Ruler" was clearly extolling the virtues of rape and was actually using that word, "rape."  (Because while the act of rape is fun, natural, and necessary, the word "rape" is generally verboten -- unless, of course, it is used to explain how rape is not "rape.")

I took a quick peek at the comments, and didn't know what the hell to think, so I turned the matter over to the webmistress of Bodycrimes, who is, like, five times smarter than I am, for her take on what "Ruler" was all about.  She graciously dashed off a brilliant assessment of the post, "Raywolf," and "Ruler" that I am re-posting here.  Please read it and please, please do not go over to the article on Return of Kings; rest assured the relevant passages have been summarized and extrapolated here:

Does misogyny cause reading problems?

I’ve been so busy lately I’ve mostly stopped reading Manosphere websites, much to the relief of Mr BC. But this morning I received an email about an article, so I went and took a look. The article in question confirmed my opinion, once again, that hard-core misogynists have something of a reading problem.

They want so badly to believe whatever it is that they’re reading is true, that they literally fail to comprehend what’s right in front of them.

The article in question is ‘Women Can’t Control Their Animal Instincts’ over at Return of Kings.com, written by one ‘raywolf’. Basically, the article is your common-or-garden women-hating tripe. Raywolf starts with an anecdote about how a pet lioness took a swipe at someone, to establish the fact that women can’t be trusted, and then he starts riffing on how women have had a negative impact on his own life.

None of his anecdotes make him look good. He details a broken marriage that was partly based on him marrying someone so he could get a diplomatic passport. (Thus proving he was much too young and dumb to marry, as he evidently didn’t realise – and perhaps still doesn’t – that the only non-spousal family members who can get an ‘A1′ passport are legal dependents a.k.a. children.) Then he talks about being taken advantage of by a flaky flatmate, and then about his relationship with a psycho woman who compelled him to make poor business decisions, which is why he missed out on being part of the global enterprise his former business partner then went on to build.

In other words, RayWolf is the last person any young man with prospects should be taking life advice from. Still, readers were quick to congratulate him on writing such an insightful and helpful article, as RoK readers are wont to do.

And then the weird thing happened.

A commenter called ‘Ruler’ came along and wrote this:

Men are gods and women are less than soulless beasts. But men are partly controlled by biology as well, in the matter of sex, as raywolf says. While rape where a male is the victim is a monstrous, unnatural act, men have a deep-seated, completely natural, biological need to rape girls and women, and should never be shamed or punished for this basic male right and need…

Now that’s some hard core misogyny right there! So hard core, that it even upset some RoK readers, who took ‘Ruler’ to task for advocating rape. This is RayWolf’s reply:

You have to be careful how you word statements like this….. the original point of a marriage contract was to show the women had offered herself up to the man, as and when he felt like it….. thus a man could basically force himself on his woman….. and women do actually like that kind of thing in the right context….. princesses were married off because it suited the politics of the day, and essentially their new husband ‘raped’ them on their wedding night…. (so much for the Disney princess fantasy…. ) but after a while the woman got experienced and grew to like it…. but none of this means you can go trolling the streets at night for pretty young things…… NO WAY!

In other words – way back when, aristocrats regularly raped one another, to their mutual satisfaction. But that doesn’t mean us plebs today could or should do it!

Nothing daunted, Ruler cheerfully responds by saying:

OK, good point. Don’t rape. But it is every man’s biological need to force sex on girls of his choosing, teaching her that she is less than nothing and is only here to serve men. And I am clearly not a troll, as I am only repeating what many on here have said, just mistakenly used the word “rape”.

See what Ruler did just then? Outed himself/herself as a troll. S/he gives it away right smack in the middle of a clearly sarcastic comment. At least one reader did understand it was a troll at work. And RayWolf was promptly called out at least once for suggesting that women grow to like forced sex, which is somewhat heartening to see.

RayWolf should have stopped at that point. The conversation was getting close to advocating violence and some readers were clearly uneasy. But RayWolf didn’t pick up on the tone. Which led him to write this:

Actually [forced sex] works brilliantly and i’ve tried it with girlfriends…. you obviously have to know them well, but forcing yourself on them, and forcing yourself inside her when she’s still tight, dry and trying to resist makes for great sex, and is very alpha…. the marriage contract was originally all about this act… AND… in my opinion the reason that most LTRs fail is because men don’t have the balls to do this more often… although admittedly it can be hard if she’s in a boner killing mood…..

Oh dear. Tricked into revealing his unsavoury sexual practices by someone who was obviously a troll.

Just why are young men taking advice from this man again?

This is something to bear in mind when reading the manosphere: it is riddled with trolls.  In other words, these guys are often hoaxing each other.  Who is "Ruler" and what is he/she playing at?  We can probably assume he/she is a "manosphere antagonizer" if not a "feminist sympathizer."  On the other hand, he may just be a bored lonely dude with a couple of hours to kill who, due to his own low esteem, finds it validating to "prove" he is smarter than a bunch of morons.  

And furthermore, as Ms. Bodycrimes points out, why are RoK's readers so eager to take advice from some random dude ("raywolf") who admits his own life, in every respect, is completely fucked up?  Why do they cluster at the odoriferous feet of Roosh, whose life by any rational measure and by his own admission is pretty damn miserable and unsatisfying, and whose central ambition at this point is to persuade Russia to take him in?

Once I had read Ms. Bodycrimes' post, I couldn't believe how I hadn't spotted the trollery myself!  Maybe because, no matter how hard I try, I cannot understand what motivates the New Misogynists, who have nothing to gain and everything to lose by adopting such bleak, amoral philosophies.

But paranoia is infectious.  As soon as I realized that "Ruler" was a troll, it made me wonder if my Gentle Reader was, too.  Was Gentle Reader one of Ruler's alters?  Because what could be more delightfully malicious than to get me to respond to a troll's comments by bewailing the new depths RoK had sunk to? Trolling x 2!

And guess what?  Gentle Reader really was a gentle reader, after all. The wolf in sheep's clothing was, after all, a lamb. Thank you, Gentle Reader, and I'm sorry I doubted you. 

By the way, if you are interested in following the New Misogynists, I advise you to start by reading "secondary sources" like David Futrelle's manboobz or any of the blogs listed to the right.  This helps "filter" the content and places it firmly in the mocking or critical light it deserves.  Direct exposure to the manosphere can be psychologically traumatizing for the uninitiated.  I'm serious!

Meanwhile, the sun is shining and my papers are calling, and bless us everyone.