Attention-seeking manosphere guru Roosh V posts article on “Why You Should Beat Your Kids” [UPDATE: Was it plagiarized?]
So it seems that some Men’s Rightsers and manospherians, reveling in the negative attention they’ve managed to get from the mainstream for some of their more reprehensible postings, have decided to up the ante a bit, posting stuff that’s so deliberately over the top in its despicableness that even some of their readers have been taken aback.
A case in point: A paean to child abuse recently posted on Roosh’s Return of Kings blog. (Let me put a big TRIGGER WARNING on all the quotes from it that follow.)
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In Why You Should Beat Your Kids, guest poster Rebel Yell argues — well, asserts — that
Beating builds character, and in my estimation, is the solution for today’s flabby, emasculated, and gynocentric culture.
The piece is filled with such wisdom as:
If you don’t beat your kids your son will end up banging some dude and your daughter will become an anarcha-feminist with an unshorn vag.
Yep. For you see, the beatings being advocated here are intended to enforce the patriarchal, homophobic, antifeminist, and even the fatphobic views favored by Roosh and his readers:
[T]oday’s kids … should be beat constantly until they realize that they can’t get away and have to fight back to survive. Beat until they lose their narcissistic attitude and accept that weakness is never an option. Beat until she loses weight and he stops playing with Barbie dolls.
Rebel Yell devotes much of the post to an obviously fictional tale of his own upbringing — which naturally involved a lot of beatings at the hands of his dad — before concluding with an exceedingly vicious attack on some favorite manosphere villains. Who happen to be real people.
Do us all a favor: beat your kids from time to time. If this simple rule was followed Miley Cyrus would shut the fuck up because Billy Ray laid a black eye on his slut daughter, Perez Hilton would be shamed to suicide, and Lindy West would die an ignoble death somewhere in the hinterlands of Hell. After all, Satan is male, right?
This is just straight up harassment.
Like some Men’s Rights activists who revel in saying vile things but try to wriggle out of taking moral responsibility for what they say, Roosh has declared that Rebel Yell’s post was “meant to be satire.”
Clearly Roosh has no idea what satire is. So here is a brief refresher. Satire is
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
In other words, you need to actually disagree with the views you are satirizing. As I’ve pointed out before, when Jonathan Swift wrote his famous Modest Proposal, he didn’t actually believe that eating babies was a good idea. If he had, it wouldn’t have been satire, just a really fucked up essay by a really fucked up weirdo.
The only way Rebel Yell’s post would be satire would be if it were intended as a takedown of misogynist assholes who believe that beatings and bullying are an appropriate response to such supposed social ills as feminism, homosexuality, sluttiness, and obesity, and who hate Jezebel writer Lindy West so much they like to imagine her dead.
But that’s not a description of the sort of people who Roosh and his readers are against; that’s a description of who they are. Indeed, Roosh and his pals in the manosphere just devoted a week to a celebration of anti-fat bullying.
These guys are in many ways beyond satire. It’s hard to imagine anyone more exaggeratedly awful than they already are.
EDIT: And it turns out that this allegedly “humorous” post — as a number of people have pointed out — seems to have been plagiarized in part from a post by misogynistic “humorist” Maddox. Some similar passages:
MADDOX: If you don’t beat your kids when they fall out of line, the next thing you know your son will go off and bang some dude in the ass just out of spite.
REBEL YELL: If you don’t beat your kids your son will end up banging some dude and your daughter will become an anarcha-feminist with an unshorn vag.
MADDOX: The problem is that kids today think their opinions matter. By not beating your kids, they get a skewed perspective of reality … .
REBEL YELL: Beat until they realize that their opinions don’t matter.
And then there’s this. [TRIGGER WARNING for graphics even worse than the quotes so far.]
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Maddox illustrated his post with this graphic, now available as a t-shirt:
Return of Kings illustrated its post with this picture and a nearly identical caption.
From Return of Kings
So Return of Kings is not even original in its offensiveness.
Posted on October 25, 2013, in advocacy of violence, antifeminism, attention seeking, bullying, citation needed, creepy, evil fat fatties, evil women, excusing abuse, gender policing, harassment, homophobia, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, patriarchy, PUA, reactionary bullshit, rhymes with roosh, shaming tactics, that's not funny!, things that aren't satire, trigger warning and tagged child abuse, cyberbullying, harassment, misogyny, pick-up artists, pickup artists, PUA, roosh. Bookmark the permalink. 122 Comments.
More hugs and kittens and puppies to everyone who wants them. These stories are hard to read, but thank you for sharing them. I know it can’t be easy.
Here’s a picture of Maru wearing a crab hat, if it helps:
http://cuteoverload.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/dsc_1015.jpg?w=560
Hi, this is Angela Gibbons. I have nothing constructive to offer, I’m just showing off my new profile and kitty avatar!
These personal stories are really sad. To think these things happen even in this day and age is just… depressing. The people who promote shit like this make me furious.
Thank you guys for sharing. Hugs to everyone who wants them, and all the sympathy to those who don’t.
Adorable kittens for everyone!
Apart from all the hate and cruelty, fundamentally it’s just stupid. I mean these guys are hell bent on getting everything wrong and ignoring all facts and credible research. There is absolutely no evidence that beating kids will de-gay them, de-”pussify” them, toughen them, prepare them for the harsh world, and make them fit snugly into narrow gender roles. None.
There IS evidence however that any hitting of a child for any reason at any age only hurts, humiliates, and damages trust. It is never a good idea to hit, slap, spank, let alone beat. Spankings occur because the parent has lost his/her temper. In that moment, there is no interest for the betterment of that child - it is all about the adult losing control. Period.
Radical Parrot, omg so cute! ::iz ded::
All your anger suggests a heapin’ helping of denial.
Since we’re doing story time…
First, hugs to Ally, dustydeste, auggz, Marie, Alice, and anyone else I’ve missed or who wants one.
Second…TW: child abuse, self-injury, suicide, and uh, ranting about my psych which counts as? (I’m gonna channel pecunium on that one — malpractice and negligence)
“and being “negative”(wouldn’t it be great if we could solve decade long depression with some positive thinking?!)”
My fucking meds psych pulled that in a joint session with talk psych, her, me, and my mother. A little meeting that was supposed to be about getting my mother’s take on my day-to-day functioning since she sees me far more. Agreed to that, spent an hour basically being berated for being too negative and rejecting things without trying them (like applying for programming jobs, because I’m good without computers, with exactly zero related things on my resume…saying it won’t work is rejecting things without trying and sometimes you have to apply to hundreds of places!)
And this is my fucking psych (thank the gods I’m getting an intern instead of having to see her again!)
When I was younger it was that from my parents, plus a dose of religion — fucking pastor had these verses I was supposed to recite. Honestly it reminds me a lot of saying the rosary…except the bead part might’ve actually keep me distracted. Yeah, I’m another one who just ended up cutting privately since anyone knowing, or knowing I was suicidal, just got me in trouble.
My father wasn’t usually physically abusive, but yeah, studying at the table? Cool! Next day? Go somewhere else! (In far more angry and long winded terms) I got to be a damned good liar from dodging his anger. Anything and everything could set him off, or nothing would, and what sort of day it was was (is) utterly unpredictable (these days we tend to just ignore him and retreat to our own rooms and he can’ treacly climb stairs so it works)
Got threatened with being disowned so many times I ended up snapping at him one day “good, do it!”…that went over badly. My favorite though? If they divorce it will be my fault. These days I’m like “divorce him already mom!” (Which isn’t going to happen currently since his father’s in a retirement home cuz dementia and my father is an asshole so she’s doing the shopping for his diapers and the snacks his special diet allows and all that [can't remember what he had to eat half an hour ago, but knows he's got the best daughter in law in the world…it's a sort of dementia I can deal with])
Back in topic! He’d rant and rave about how no one listens and why are we asking permission we’ll just do what we want anyways and no one wants him around and he should just go kill himself already and then devolve into whatever method he was threatening that day. Fucking terrifying as a kid. (And this is why Hugo. Fucking. Schwyzer. blaming feminists for him attempting suicide makes me want to kill him myself)
…I think I’m done…thanks guys, y’all really are more helpful than my psychs.
Nitram — I’m going to have to disagree that all spankings, ever, are the parent loosing their temper. I know people who were spanked just a couple of times after they’d done something that could’ em gotten them killed. And in those cases I’m okay with just enough of a smack on the backside to associate what they did with pain, but if, and only if, what they tried to do could be seriously dangerous or fatal. (Of course, if he kid is mature enough to be lectured, that is preferable but I can see the argument that the truly rare, honest to goodness spanking — not abuse, can be used to condition a kid out of endangering their life)
Over stupid shit or because you’re pissed? No, not okay. Because your kid just did something potentially fatal? It’s an argument I can see as viable, and certainly isn’t inherently the parent loosing their temper.
HUGE hugs to everyone, with added cat furs (Fribbie’s been sitting on me).
I hope my “it’s okay to tell your stories and you’ve nothing to feel sorry about!” rant didn’t come across as like that “think positive and depression will disappear” tripe. I know it’s not easy and ingrained thinking patterns are hella difficult to fight - been there, too - I just want to have it in black and white from someone else here that is is okay, something to show jerkbrain and say “See? See that?” as a bit of help (hopefully), something to refer to.
(Did I get the run-on sentence prize yet, huh, huh?)
Marie - “Pass the mental image on, why don’t you
”
That comment made my day!
Baby ducks on a water slide:
There is some evidence to suggest that hitting a child on the hand or whatever when they’re doing something which will be fatal (like a fork in a light socket) is actually a good deterrent, but it has to be immediate, and not a moment after they’ve stopped, and it has to be once and sudden and not happen at other times.
@Kittehs
Fribbie told me to post this for you:
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/da/01/96/da01960245a3a2063efdeaa361214d06.jpg
@argenti
Thanks for the hugs :3 And jedi hugs back at you, if you want them.
Fribbie haz taken over the internetz!
She is, of course, correct.
It’s like the Real Reasons knitting was invented:
so humans would sit down and provide lap time
and
provide distracting strings for kitties to play with.
“Fribbie haz taken over the internetz!”
She is part of the Hivemind. She is one of the many cats in the ferret suit that makes up David.
neuroticbeagle - LOLOLOL, kitty snark.
Thankee for hugs, here’s some more to add to the hug barrel: *drops hugs into barrel for anyone who wants it*
neuroticbeagle - this is truth. Just think, anywhere one sees a cat, or a ferret … there is David.
No. Our anger means we have functioning moral compasses.
Just offering more hugs to all beloved manboobzers.
Denial of what exactly? That it’s satire?
Which is it, we’re angry because we’re denying his TRUTH, or it’s satire? Can’t have it both ways.
Ouch, people’s stories…. all the hugs, tea, sympathy and stray fur you guys want and/or need.
I come from a country that has shocking statistics for very small children being beaten to death, so seeing some asshole try to write off shit like this as “satire”… well, he can shove his obviously malfunctioning dictionary up his butt.
And yes, I deny that it is satire, or that if it were meant to be taken seriously (which, obvs), that it is an effective method of child-rearing.
We need more Brain Bleach.
@BritterSweet Your video linked to this one, but I think it’s appropriate to all of this:
@Draconius
Welcome!!
I think the term Rebel Yell needs to be introduced to is advocate.
And as someone who grew up in a country, and a culture, that endorsed corporal punishment, and who got his share of it, this is straight up child abuse. I see too many people try to hide this type of bullshit as corporal punishment, and I want to call it out for the bullshit it is before some apologist comes in here and tries that shit.
naltia, yay for kitty avatars! Is that your feline overlord?
Showing off kitty avatars IS constructive.
Fuck, I just watched Ellen videos for half an hour.
LOL could be worse ways to spend thirty minutes.
I see that Ian “rusted on knickers” Ironwood was dispensing PUA wisdom on Pharyngula. Didn’t last long, of course; PZ kicked him out pretty quickly. Entertaining while it lasted, though.
Kitties invented snark. People are just weak imitators.
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/14/c0/ba/14c0ba6d7c2d704bd1a45c266be58568.jpg
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/1f/59/04/1f5904dc01f83fbbc3d2081be2817bd4.jpg
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/8e/c0/3a/8ec03aabaf49d1e6829d0fc85bf94332.jpg
I actualy think a few brushes with violence is necessary - but the kid needs to fight people he can beat, people his own size. The kid can’t beat his father back, and either way the family is supposed to be a unit of love and compassion and a shelter from the harsh world. The kid will have plenty of violence to deal with outside.
That’s why, if I had kids, and they’d get bullied, I’d encourage them to beat those bullies with no mercy. After all, the school system doesn’t defend our kids - it defends the bullies.
This is a really disgusting article
Hugs to all you survivors of child abuse in various forms.
Argenti,
I do believe in natural consequences, like if you hit a dog it snaps at you, if you hit a cat it will tear your face off, etc. but I’m not so sure about hitting your child, even in danger. There’s really no evidence to suggest it works as a future deterrent. That being said, there’s nothing to suggest it’s detrimental either. I have 2 kids and I have completely lost my shit on more than one occasion. They can bring you to the Dark Side. I’ve slapped my son, after he slapped me, I’ve screamed and yelled, said stupid things. The only thing I’ve learned from any of it is the more angry and aggressive I get, the more it escalates the situation and completely backfires. Regret always follows. I don’t regret yanking him out of the street and scaring him so he won’t do it again, but hitting in that situation just seems inappropriate and I haven’t seen any research to support its effectiveness. Are you thinking just when they’re little and you can’t talk to them about why it’s dangerous?
Read this via http://thatfeministdyke.tumblr.com/ and found it fitting. All Manospherians and other misogynist racist asshats should understand this.
Also:
@communication ASP
I seriously doubt that.
There’s a difference between self defense and ‘beating someone with no mercy’. One is okay. The other is…really not.
@kittehserf, Actually, he isn’t. That is my hand in the picture, but the cat was my roommates cat. He just liked to give my mouse-hand hugs when I was playing on the computer, so it seemed an appropriate avatar pic.
I had a great picture of my current kitty overlord, but her pic didn’t resize as well, so I went with a more entertaining pic instead.
That’s why, if I had kids, and they’d get bullied, I’d encourage them to beat those bullies with no mercy. After all, the school system doesn’t defend our kids – it defends the bullies.
Meaning that, when your imaginary kid fights the imaginary bully, the school system is going to defend the bully, right? And your kid is the one who’s going to be facing everything from expulsion to juvenile court, while the bully gets supported? On top of possibly getting their faces beaten in by the bully, because, protip, moral superiority does not automatically lead to amazing fighting skills.
Speaking as somebody who does have kids and has had to deal with bullying and indifferent, stupid school administrators: “Just hit them back!” is bad advice. It may give you a pleasant feeling to imagine your own putative children sending a bully running forever with one well-placed fist, but in the real world? No.
Somewhat related: I was checking out the new blogs recently added at Patheos, and I found this one:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/searchingfortomsawyer/
It’s the blog of an Evangelical Lutheran pastor who is way fixated on… boys. Well, not in a sexual sense, I hope, but he is one of those people who think that there is some kind of “boy crisis”.
Sample:
In short, a gold mine of gender essentialism.
I wonder if he knows that even Mark Twain thought Tom Sawyer to be insufferable…
“Are you thinking just when they’re little and you can’t talk to them about why it’s dangerous?”
Yeah, I was, once they’re old enough to understand that this is a Bad Thing I’m all for reasoning with them on their level. And I meant what SittieKitty said — a swat as soon as possible so they associate the dangerous behavior with, well, pain. Cuz “ow that smarts” is better than getting hit by a car or eating bleach, etc.
And, of course, not for things they’ve ever been allowed to do, or they may not get that no, you never ever do this.
FTR, my experience with kids is limited to other people’s offspring, so my grown up voice and logic, at their level, has always worked (but the worst I’ve had to deal with is no, you cannot take that free kitten)
Re: bullies — yeah, just hit back harder really isn’t the best advice. Though I am still downright proud of my one and only suspension as a kid — tried all the proper channels, repeatedly, told the kid to stop, repeatedly, told him if he didn’t I was going to kick him, he didn’t, so I did. Apparently it did work for that one, but he was a lone jerk, wouldn’t have gotten me anywhere against half the football team in HS (not letting the cheerleaders cheat off you goes over poorly)
That one, really, requires fixing the whole damned system. Seriously, I got suspended for one kick in self-defense — didn’t attempt to lie about it or anything either — beating without mercy will get the kid in serious trouble.
Communication: You can’t actually create your own Ender Wiggin that way, you know.
My younger son was neglected (birth mother) and abused (foster mother). We adopted him at age five. He’s now twelve, and has been in therapy as long as he’s been with us. He recently (within the last year) stopped hitting me. He now uses please and thank you to get what he wants. If I’d followed the ‘speak roughly to your little boy, and beat him when he sneezes ‘ approach, he’d be halfway to Tom Riddle by now. I tremble to think what would have happened had he stayed in the abusive foster home, or been adopted by less flexible parents. Oh, the foster mother lost her fostering license over how she treated him, so yay for CPS for that.
The very young don’t usually associate the swat with the specific behavior. They associate the swat with you. That is usually the point at which they take a swing at you because they just learned that that is one of the many things peeps do.
Blurgh, I forgot how much I hate home-hunting. I dealt with possibly the skeeziest broker ever today, but at least I might have an exciting housing opportunity that wouldn’t involve being closeted, literally OR figuratively!
All the stuff about child abuse just reminds me of Random Creeper I got this week who sent me a PM on LJ saying, “I’m most sorry you feel like you have to cut your family off and have negative feelings towards so many people that at least maybe “tried” to love you” THANK YOU CREEPY STRANGER!
RE: Communication ASAP
but the kid needs to fight people he can beat, people his own size…That’s why, if I had kids, and they’d get bullied, I’d encourage them to beat those bullies with no mercy. After all, the school system doesn’t defend our kids – it defends the bullies.
You realize this sounds like you’re actually encouraging your kids to BE bullies, right?
So MRAs often argue that women are bad because they commit a lot of child abuse, but also argue that men should commit child abuse?
Can someone just go all Lisbeth Salander on him already?
but the kid needs to fight people he can beat, people his own size…
In a word, no.
See, if he can beat them, and not lose, it’s sport; and cruel sport.
If it’s an evenly matched contest what the kid learns is going to be outside the control of the parents.
and if the kid can’t win (say the other kid has been taking judo for the past three years), then it’s going to teach them they can’t win.
Furthermore, none of that has bupkis to do with bullies. So the conflation of those two isn’t useful.
Given that most bullies have support networks (both in the world of kids, and in the world of adults) the odds of being able to, “beat them without mercy” is slim. For one, the bully is (contra the stereotype) often more used to violence. Secondly, most bullies don’t start with the blows, they start with little indignities; boundary testing.
They they move to emotional indignities. By the time they move to physical abuses the victim has lost a lot of the sense they can win.
So this is a bad way to model the situation.
“They they move to emotional indignities. By the time they move to physical abuses the victim has lost a lot of the sense they can win.”
And that is why I remain proud of my suspension. Too many abusive ex’s and assholes since then, it’s a reminder of days when I could, and did, win. Because jerkwad was still on emotional indignities and learned with a swift kick that I wadn’t having it.
And I repeat… One. Kick. That I owned up to.
Beat without mercy isn’t self-defense, full stop. Teach your kid that in school and enjoy bailing them out after a fight as an adult, cuz that’s assault, not self-defense.
(Pecunium, nawh, I can’t kick as high as you, but catch it in the back of the thigh while wiggling your ass at me and you are going down)
In my school, if I beat the shit out of my bullies I’d probably have been labeled “crazy bitch”, which means more coddling for them and more bullying for me. Also suspension for me.
Violent fantasies sound nice, since a lot of those bullies do “deserve” it(as in the pain they inflict emotionally/physically would be equal to a merciless beating), but it’s still a bad idea.
I did get violent with my main bully once, but not like a beating. He told me to kill myself a lot, would stare at me while I ate in a disgusted manner(I wasn’t overweight or anorexic, but it still made me feel super self conscious), and did a bunch of other horrible shit(in another thread I mentioned how some boys dressed up as the Sandusky rape victims at school, and he was one of them). One day he kept fucking with my stuff, so I stabbed his hand hard with a pencil. I expected him to get violent back with me, but he just started whining and showing everyone the wound, while everyone told him “what did you expect? You were fucking with her stuff”. He still bullied me after, but it was always from a distance.
So our “teach them to beat the bullies without mercy” friend doesn’t have kids and has never spent much time around kids as an adult, right? And has memory problems which have led hir to forget what happens to kids who beat the shit out of other kids at school and get caught?
My Dad actually did teach me to hit people who bullied me back. I only had to do it once, and yep, it worked. Thing is, the way it played out was kid was harassing me, I tried to walk away, he followed me and yanked on my hair, and I turned around and punched him, on the playground in full view of both kids and teachers. So a. everyone could see that he’d started it and b. I only hit him once, and then as soon as he backed off so did I. If I’d followed that one punch up with beating the shit out of him I’d have been in far more trouble than he would.
Teaching your kids to stand up for themselves is great, but please don’t teach them to be stupid and to replicate the behavior that you claim to be against.
So basically, some guy plagiarized Maddox? A lot of the quotes seem very similar to something Maddox wrote in 2002. Except the original clearly was satire.
I don’t know if I’m allowed to post a link, but google “maddox beat kid” or something like that and you’ll see it.
Joseph, thanks. I checked it out and updated the post. Not only is the basic idea unoriginal, but there are several similar passages — and ROK stole the idea and wording for a particularly offensive graphic/caption combo.
Speaking of anarcha-feminists (quote in OP)… Emma Goldman wrote about being abused in childhood, right? What a success, with a submissive woman like her.
And ugh. These beliefs do seem awfully common even outside the manosphere.
Where I live, the l only consistent difference between what’s considered child physical abuse and “discipline” seems to be that the latter lands the victim in the hospital; it seems pretty accepted. My classmates of all ages would talk about being whipped, and a few about how they would do the same to their kids to keep them from turning gay (!)… So I also got beaten, didn’t turn out okay either, but at least I don’t carry those monstrous attitudes! In my experience, corporal punishment and outright abuse weren’t fundamentally different at all, perhaps because of the lax attitude toward abuse (and conflation with corporal punishment). YMMV though.
How exactly does one shave a vagina? Does he realize that pubes don’t generally grow in the “vag” ? Do feminists unshavenness generally make them so goddamn hairy, that it grows out from the orifices too?