Vox Day: The Taliban’s shooting of Malala Yousafzai may have been “perfectly rational and scientifically justifiable.”
Malala Yousafzai, survivor
Vox Day, the reactionary fantasy author and pickup guru who was recently expelled from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America , has convinced himself that education for women leads to “demographic implosion” because uppity educated women don’t have enough babies.
Indeed, Vox — real name, Theodore Beale — is convinced that education for women is such a bad thing that he actually thinks that “the Taliban may not, in fact, be the stupid ones with regards to this particular matter.”
By this he means not only that they’re right to keep girls out of schools, but that they’re also probably justified in shooting teenage girls for the terrible crime of speaking up publicly in favor of education for girls like themselves.
No, really:
[I]n light of the strong correlation between female education and demographic decline, a purely empirical perspective on Malala Yousafzai, the poster girl for global female education, may indicate that the Taliban’s attempt to silence her was perfectly rational and scientifically justifiable.
It’s quite telling that it is the “shooting-girls-in-the-head” issue that turns Beale — a right-wing evangelical Christian — into something of a fan of the Taliban.
Posted on October 23, 2013, in a woman is always to blame, advocacy of violence, antifeminism, evil single moms, evil women, hypergamy, mansplaining, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, PUA, reactionary bullshit, red pill, violence, vox day and tagged antifeminism, Malala Yousafzai, misogyny, patriarchy, pickup artists, PUA, taliban. Bookmark the permalink. 50 Comments.
Ugh, ugh UGH.
OT: I found a picture of David. Well, maybe David’s cousin.
I made the mistake of following the link and reading the comments. The only comfort I can give myself is knowing that those folks just don’t have any grounding in reality. The way they think, the way they see th world…it truly boggles.
It drives me crazy that the persons most vocal in denouncing all of Islam as radical are, in fact, radical Christians who reject most of their brethren in faith as not being “true” Christians.
Because shooting people in the head leads to them procreating more, obviously. /s
Would it really be so bad to have population-growth drop? *says the woman on birth-control who is quite clear she doesn’t want any children.* So maybe I would not be the one to ask about things like this.
Also, eurgh, what a vile human being Vox is.
Another case of “Fatwa Envy”
Had he not been kicked out of a SF&F writers organization already, I would think supporting efforts to eliminate half the audience base though violence probably would have done so.
So all the “moderate” winger writers will continue to pound Scalzi for being the PC police, and pointedly ignore the violent fantasizing of a man sympathizing with thugs and murderers willing to shoot a 14 year old girl for demanding something they all take for granted.
*sigh* (But thanks for the portal to http://tragedyseries.tumblr.com Howard. It’s helping.)
Especially since it has this epic brain-bleach!
http://tragedyseries.tumblr.com/image/61405978918
Citation. Fucking. Needed.
Coke! Pepsi! Coke! Pepsi!
When you think they’ve hit rock bottom… When you think this is really, REALLY the bottom… they uncover a gigantic megaton fucking drilling machine and start drilling away.
He’s really making the case for more education, starting with himself.
Is he doing this for page hits or is he really this evil?
I think reactionaries just want a higher birth rate because keeping birth rates high is the only logical reason to subordinate women from cradle to grave.
Once the “need” for population growth is obviated, none of the rest of the whole patriarchal kit’n'kaboodle makes any sense at all.
I was thinking about why all the reactionary racist and anti-feminist circles seem to overlap so much- there is no obvious reason for, say, Sunshine Mary or Roissy to link to Steve Sailer, except that his nonstop panic about white birthrates serves to bolster both their arguments about how (white) women are doing life all wrong.
Because the worst thing in the world is when women get educated, because then she might decide to *gasp!* get a job, which makes her *gasp!* independent from men with her own source of income. And it gives her the knowledge to *gasp!* reject creepy assholes like Vox because she knows better and isn’t ignorant anymore!
Of course, the “ZOMG WE IS GONNA DIE OUT CUZ LESS BABBIES!” rant is getting old.
Is Vox a racist? Really, the only reason is because the only people who seem to care all that much are white supremacists who think that because the fertility rate is less than 2.1 that the world is gonna end by 2050 or something.
Birthrates fall to sustainable levels as women’s literacy increases. This isn’t news. Wise people regard this fact as a good thing; Day considers this a bad thing, QED, Day is not a wise person.
@hellkell: I wondered that myself, and there’s probably a bit of linkbait at play here. However, the post itself is just two ideas he’s already expressed (educating women leads to “demographic collapse”/violence against women is often justified) taken to their logical extreme. There’s no reason to assume that he doesn’t believe it.
I’m surprised that I’m not more shocked, but then I decided years ago that I wasn’t going to let Beale shock me anymore. He’s just a clown - a virulently racist, abhorrently misogynistic clown.
It appears the quote you pulled from the blog has been redacted.
Why don’t these folks have the courage of their convictions and let their words stand?
Would it kill them to simply apologize if they change their minds instead of trying to make it look like they never said it in the first place?
@Alice Sanguinaria:
Yes. He’s expressed ideas about demographics that are straight out of Stormfront, and I’ve seen him say that black and Hispanics shouldn’t be allowed to vote. He’s also a bit of an anti-Semite on top of all that. Nice guy.
@Chie Satonaka: I think that’s not a really controversial assertion, that female education tends to reduce birth rates. Most people seem to think this is a good thing; educated women have fewer, healthier children as a group: http://www.unicef.org/sowc96/ngirls.htm
Racists and nationalists of all stripes tend to freak when they see “their” little segment of society waning in numbers, but surely it would be better to have half as many people well-cared for than twice that number in poverty, in the long run.
Well this is terrible.
Poe’s law is in effect here. I cannot say anything more ridiculous than what this asinine hack has already shitted out with his keyboard.
Jeepers creepers.
I can only echo Dvarghundspossen (above): there seems to be no depth to which these people cannot sink.
Fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree. He is just like his dear old dad…a complete right wing nut job.
Ceebarks, that concurs with what I’ve read - and also my personal experience. In my own family, of the seven children, everyone who has attended college has not procreated, everyone who didn’t, has. In the latter group, it might have been better for all concerned if they hadn’t.
Higher education - the most effective contraception! No wonder the usual suspects are so disapproving of it.
@proudfootz:
Oh, that’s not surprising at all. A few years back, Beale (I refuse to use his stupid pen name) created a dozen or so sock puppet accounts on Wikipedia, which he used to remove criticism and cram his name into articles where it didn’t belong. You have no idea how petty and ridiculous this guy can be.
The “this will cause the human race to die out” argument always comes up when the actual argument is that the person arguing wants to get away with being an oppressive a-hole. This was often the reason women’s suffrage was a bad idea, and of course same-sex marriage is a bad idea for that reason too.
Blah.
“The Men’s Human Rights Movement: Fighting for to gain rights that nobody lacks and privileges that nobody needs, one human rights violation at a time.”
Dear “Men’s Rights” Movement,
You are no longer permitted to use the label, “men” to refer to yourselves, as this implies membership of the human race. False advertising will not be tolerated.
Ugh. Why do I read these people’s comments?
That’s right, kids, everyone in a relationship is in a relationship with the opposite sex. LGBT? What’s that mean?
Ugh. I can’t.
ALL THE TRIGGER WARNINGS
Also, Nolan is nearly gleeful at the thought he might cause a woman to kill herself.
I found it helpful just now to look at a picture of my cat.
I’m happy to see that someone called Beale on his sexist idiocy. He rarely if ever cites his “facts” which leads me to believe that he makes most of them up himself. (I read his blog regularly - I teach a course in human diversity and he is a gold mine of anti-diversity nonsense with which I can scarify my class. Too many of them believe that racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. are no longer “really” problems in this world, because we’ve fixed all that, sigh.) His commenters are mostly his true-believers and are often so extreme that they make him look good. I find it horrifying that so many people with such beliefs are actually out there running around. I don’t remember which blog this passage came out of - his Vox Populi (NOT!) or Alpha Game. He often echoes similar entries in both of them.
Can we not be ableist? These people are despicable enough that we don’t have to include ableism in it…
One day, the whole manosphere will find something so misogynistic that even their shriveled little hearts will be given cause to beat. Apparently an attempted execution of a 14 yr old girl for wanting to be educated is not that thing. Dickwads.
Evidently, it’s better for a country to be overpopulated and poor than not overpopulated and prosperous. Also, I wonder if he is aware that the “rational and scientific” Taliban also oppose teaching boys anything other than religion (from what I read, this was a chief point of contention between bin Laden and Mullah Omar; bin Laden felt that it was important for Muslims to learn such things as engineering and economics, rather than just the Quran).
@ceebarks
Not if you think there’s an X-war going (race, religion, whatever). At that point it’s imperative that you breed soldiers..Of course that still makes them dickheads, it’s just that you can’t argue with that particular variety.
Considering how much of a racist fuck Beale is, it’s funny he’s acting as an apologist for the Taliban. I guess with him, misogyny wins out over racism.
the other thing is that bugs me is, people who fret about “demographic decline” invariably seem to leave out the fact that there had been a population explosion leading up to the decline. Like human history starts with the Baby Boom and we are all duty-bound to have four or twelve kids apiece til we colonize Mars or something. Japan’s case is probably going to be instructive- last I read, they were on track to have about the same population in 2100 as they had in 1940, which doesn’t sound tragic to me.
That said, I have four kids and to me, not wanting to have kids is like not liking to eat cheese- totally your business, obviously, but personally I don’t “get” how anyone can not crave cheese!
OTOH, hey, it’s better for the environment for there to be fewer cheese-eaters than more, and coercing/guilting people into eating cheese when they don’t want to serves precisely zero useful purpose, so… why would you do that?
Nothing I’ve read on this site before now has literally left me shaking in rage.
I’ve been seeing Malala on television over the past few weeks - at the White House, on Jon Stewart, meeting the Queen of England. Every time I almost couldn’t believe that a sixteen-year-old girl had such poise, charm, wisdom and gentle good humor. When I was sixteen I was barely housebroken. She is a pearl beyond price, and “Vox Day” is a swine beyond contempt.
Pah! Can’t…no…words…?!?
Cheese is the perfect analogy by me — I’m lactose intolerant. I literally cannot like cheese without enduring the results, and with the exceptions of pizza and cannolis, it ain’t worth it. Passing on my DNA ain’t worth the risk, cuz my form of nuts is probably genetic (and other reasons, but that’s a biggie)
Cheese, and babies, not worth the risk.
Most people will probably like this analogy less, but I love it.
No, it’s still there.
I probably should have made clearer that he’s got two separate posts on the subject, and I’m quoting from both of them. You need to follow the link right before I quote it; it’s in the final paragraph of the post of his I link to there.
@theladyzombie | October 23, 2013 at 12:02 pm
No, he still wants to bomb the fuck out of the Taliban; it’s just that he simultaneously wants to be them. But white.
The entangled racism and misogyny of the conservative right allows it to at once opposed to the Taliban, insisting that it is better than them, and espouse almost identical policies to them.
@argenti: see, hadn’t even thought of the lactose intolerance/ allergy angle. ha!
@Shadow, yeah, that’s true. Maybe racism is likelier to breed misogyny than the other way around.
Right-wing thinking never ceases to amaze me. How much cognitive dissonance, willful obtuseness and downright evil does it take to applaud one group you dislike for terrorizing another group you dislike? Just as long as someone they don’t particularly care for gets hurt, it’s all cool?
Translation: How do I science?
I don’t like children. At all. I don’t even know why. At some point in my life, I started getting this almost physical reaction of anxiety and even disgust whenever there were small children around. It doesn’t even make any sense, since I don’t intellectually object to children, or to people having children, and I can even find babies adorable, in theory at least. Yet the idea of having children anywhere near me makes me shudder, and the mere thought of having babies of my own gives me the heebie-jeebies.
I really can’t think of a good metaphor. It’s really weird.
The only bad thing about his expulsion from the SFWA was that people actually defended him.
Personally, I wish we could expel him from humanity. I don’t mean kill him, but maybe we could make him go live in a cave with no Internet access so no one would have to see, hear or read his spew.
The whole “oh noes, the human race is going to be completely destroyed if we don’t immediately revoke women’s rights” is a two-fold desperation tactic.
The first point is obviously to try and scare women out of being full participants in society in the name of avoiding the terrible horror of living in a world slightly less dominated by whites.
And the second point is to justify any amount of violence against the lesser groups the bigot already wanted to commit violence against. They aren’t beating up on women and minorities because the bigot is a small-minded asshole who gets off on the power of punching down. They’re defending the entire human race against people who have “willfully chosen” to destroy it. And any tactic can be excused if it’s to save the entire world…
@ Hellkell
[i]Is he doing this for page hits or is he really this evil?[/i]
Evil.
http://www.fstdt.com/QuoteComment.aspx?QID=94293
[b]Domestic violence trigger warning[/b]
[On warrior women in fantasy]
“Has Phony ever hit a woman? Has he ever seen a woman’s head snap back, seen her knees buckle, and stood over her as she lays crumpled on the floor? Has he ever bloodied a woman’s nose or blackened a woman’s eyes? Has he ever toyed with a woman desperately trying to lay a hand on him before stepping forward and flattening her with a single jab?
I have. It wasn’t even amusing because it was so easy. I had a harder time fighting a well-trained eleven year old boy. I wasn’t even throwing any combinations or throwing my strikes at more than half-force, and that was still enough to lay them out. If you are a man who hasn’t ever hit a woman in the face, or if you are a woman who hasn’t ever been beaten up by a man, your opinion on the subject is guaranteed to be irrelevant. The cumulative difference in speed, strength, and mass simply has to be experienced to be believed.
I sincerely encourage anyone who wishes to write about women warriors to visit a full-contact dojo and ask to spar a few rounds with the opposite sex. They will accommodate you and it will be an eye-opening experience.”
I can’t imagine why the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America kicked him out.
Hyena girl - bingo. The real reason far-right extremeists shriek about Muslim extremists is envy. “Why can’t I legally shoot women and throw acid at them and cut pieces of their bodies out? It’s not faiirrrrr!”
Seven billion plus of our species and he’s complaining about not enough? Though, of course, silly me, most of those people aren’t white, ergo aren’t human.