Masculinity and Rights, Misogyny and Violence

Tiassa

Tiassa

Let us not launch the boat ...
Valued Senior Member
When word emerged of a hit against a federal judge, one of the first sensational details to run amok through social media was the recent assignment of a case involving both Deutsche Bank and Jeffrey Epstein. The Sunday night attack killed Daniel Andrl, 20, and gravely wounded Mark Anderl, 63. Judge Esther Salas, home at the time of the shooting, survived uninjured.

Emerging details paint an absurd picture: This was not about an ongoing case, but, rather, it was about a girl. A woman. In this case, Judge Salas, herself:

The man suspected of ambushing the family of the first Latina federal judge in New Jersey posted thousands of pages of writing to the internet in recent years decrying feminism and ranting against her, according to websites registered in his name and address.

The man, Roy Den Hollander, an anti-feminist activist and lawyer, was pronounced dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said Monday. Den Hollander, who law enforcement officials said shot and killed the son of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas in an ambush Sunday at her home in North Brunswick, wrote about his hatred of Salas in a self-published book this year.

Den Hollander pushed his books on several websites, according to domain registration records examined by NBC News that match his known address and phone number. In the recently published memoir Den Hollander left online, he called Salas "a lazy and incompetent Latina judge appointed by Obama." Referring to a 2015 case Salas presided over, Den Hollander said he "wanted to ask the Judge out, but thought she might hold me in contempt."

(Collins and Zadrozny↱)​

In 2010, the Village Voice described Hollander as a "Men's Rights Advocate", who, "Will Not Stop Fighting Against Ladies' Nights":

Yesterday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Manhattan Federal Judge Miriam Cedarbaum's decision that ladies' nights are a legal part of New York's nightlife. The judges dismissed a complaint by Roy Den Hollander, the lawyer and plaintiff who claimed that New York clubs, Copacabana, China Club, A.E.R., Lotus, and Sol discriminate against men when they lower drink prices and door charges for ladies.Turns out, Hollender is a "Men's Rights Advocate" with a history of fighting for the rights of the "oft-maligned" modern man ....

.... In 2008, Hollander—who, according to his website has a law degree from George Washington University and a business degree from Columbia—claimed that Columbia University's Institute for Research on Women and Gender is discriminatory because there is no equivalent program for men's studies. A judge dismissed the case. He also filed a complaint claiming that the Violence Against Women Act, which allows immigrant women who were abused by their spouses to obtain citizenship, is unconstitutional. A judge dismissed the case. [His ex-wife, a Russian citizen, once used the Violence Against Women Act against him. He writes on his website that the act grants citizenship to women "falsely accusing their American husbands," and he told us that on top of it all, he didn't know that his wife was actually a "Russian mafia prostitute."]

Despite the latest dismissal, Hollander's highly personal mission to end ladies' nights isn't over. "I thought it was going to be a sure win," he says. He is currently working on a petition to appeal the decision to dismiss his case (though he admits he expects the dismissal will be upheld), and meanwhile, has filed another complaint against Amnesia, the club that refused to allow him to enter without purchasing a bottle.

"It might be because I'm a Libra, and I just don't like people violating my rights," says Hollander, who views feminists as a "special interest group" seeking "preferential treatment."

"Ladies night is a microcosm for American society today in which guys shoulder the burden, and girls receive the benefits from the guys shouldering the burden…I mean, think about the draft," he says.

(Minora↱)​

Even then, in 2010, he was running on a standard from 1953; don't ask. In the present, as NBC News reports:

Den Hollander's writings are littered with language common among the most extreme anti-feminist communities on the web, some of which he was a member of. He was active in anti-feminist and misogynist groups on Facebook, including groups titled Humanity Vs. Feminism and Men Going Their Own Way, according to an analysis of accounts linked to him.

The memoir is one part of thousands of pages of misogynist writings Den Hollander self-published in books and on websites over the last two decades.

In the 1,700-page screed, self-published this year, he also wrote about his hatred of his mother and other women and raged about female judges, including fantasizing about the rape of another judge who presided over his divorce case.

Den Hollander created a website and wrote another book about a previous marriage, in which he laments "the harm caused [to] his property by a Russian mafia prostitute, procurer, former mistress to a Chechen warlord, money launderer, drug smuggler who was aided by her mob associates." In the book, he threatens to seek retribution against the state for what he considers a "Feminazi infestation of government institutions" ....

.... On the same website, he complained of a "feminist infested American judicial system," "feminarchy" and "Obamite bigots," referring to judges appointed by former President Barack Obama.​

It's not just the abject failure, but that so many along the way would excuse and empower such obvious malice. It's true, once upon a time I would have guessed those whiny men at least manly enough to not go prove the point by destroying themselves over a girl, but the only reason anyone bothered with such pretenses was the constant bawling about how everyone else is too easily triggered. It is also true that it's long been apparent the pretense of delicateness is an iteration of the blatant refusal to recognize where the real problem lies.

They've been telling us for years, but masculine fragility demanded mitigating language, and plenty played along. I mean, sure, the bit with the Chechen warlord is pretty wild, but the rest of it is hardly new. Somewhere in my socmed circles, someone made the point↱ that the anti-feminist set out to make a point about women, and ended up killing two men; in the moment, all I could think was, Yeah, sounds about right.
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Notes:

@EmilyGorcenski. "Mens Rights Activist tries to kill one woman; kills two men instead." Twitter. 20 July 2020. Twitter.com. 20 July 2020. https://bit.ly/39eQhPs

Collins, Ben and Brandy Zadrozny. "Suspect in federal judge's home ambush railed against her in misogynistic book". NBC News. 20 July 2020. NBCNews.com. 20 July 2020. https://nbcnews.to/30wutej

Minora, Leslie. "Roy Den Hollander, Men's Rights Advocate, Will Not Stop Fighting Against Ladies' Nights". The Village Voice. 3 September 2010. VillageVoice.com. 20 July 2020. https://bit.ly/3eMOOkT
 
To revisit a note from NBC News↱, the shooter self-published a 1,700 page lamentation earlier this year: "In the book, he threatens to seek retribution against the state for what he considers a 'Feminazi infestation of government institutions.'"

Futrelle↱, meanwhile, recalls that MRA organizer Paul Elam once praised Hollander's campaign against ladies' night, and, moreover, published the future gunman in 2010—archive says:

But there is one remaining source of power in which men still have a near monopoly—firearms. At some point, the men in this country will take the Declaration of Independence literally:

"When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security."​

(Den Hollander↱)​

Turns out, Hollander has been warning us for nigh on a decade, at least.
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Notes:

Collins, Ben and Brandy Zadrozny. "Suspect in federal judge's home ambush railed against her in misogynistic book". NBC News. 20 July 2020. NBCNews.com. 20 July 2020. https://nbcnews.to/30wutej

Den Hollander, Roy. "Why Can't the Men’s Movement Get its Act Together?" A Voice for Men. 24 October 2010. Archive.vn. 20 July 2020. https://archive.vn/5h4lm

Futrelle, David. "Men's Rights attorney Roy Den Hollander accused of shooting a federal judge's husband and son". We Hunted The Mammoth. 20 July 2020. WeHuntedTheMammoth.com. 20 July 2020. https://bit.ly/2CT5YA1
 
Lesson One: It's Not Funny

First, August, 2008↱:

So New York lawyer Roy Den Hollander once married a young woman he met while working as a private investigator in Russia. Once Den Hollander moved himself and his foreign bride back to New York City, though, she took a job as a stripper and proceeded to dump him within months.

It's a sad little story, and probably not nearly the first of its kind. But to say Den Hollander seems to have had a wee bit of trouble letting it go would be a massive understatement. Since his marriage ended, the spurned groom has turned into a men's-rights crusader so convinced that feminism is the reason for all his personal woes that he's literally made a career out of litigating against it ....

.... But Den Hollander—whose third assy lawsuit targeted the federal government's Violence Against Women Act—will not be stopped. The Energizer Bunny of frivolous litigation, his latest full-scale tantrum addresses Columbia University and its women's-studies courses, which his suit describes as an indoctrination program responsible for "spreading prejudice and fostering animosity and distrust toward men with the result of wholesale violation of men's rights due to ignorance, falsehoods, and malice." It adds that, "Columbia has thrown its influence and prestige into violating the rights of men by offering a women's studies program but no men's studies program." (This from the man who in that New Yorker piece defended his beef with Title IX with the razor-sharp legal reasoning that "Sports isn't a big thing to girls, but it's a big thing to guys.")

Apparently, Den Hollander got his M.B.A. from Columbia, which seems like the only reason he'd be targeting only the women's-studies courses of that particular university. I mean, really, why not go whole hog and name every single women's-studies and women's-history course and department in the whole United States in the suit, if the object here is really to wipe out this nasty epidemic of female empowerment?

Geez. Feminism may not have the reputation for being funny, but antifeminism, as this story proves, can be hilarious.​

These years later, I guess he showed her, eh?

Still, though, how about, April, 2009↱:

Remember Roy Den Hollander, the righteously antifeminst New York lawyer whose greatest hits of frivolous litigation include, "Ladies' Nights Are Unfair to Men," "The Violence Against Women Act is Unconstitutional to ME!," and "My Mail-Order Bride Left Me to Become a Stripper, I'm Gonna Sue the Club Where She Works"? Well, you'll be relieved to know that his most recent waste of a court's time and money—a lawsuit against Columbia University contending that their Women's Studies curriculum violates Title IX and was unconstituional—was given a big thumbs-down last week ....

.... Columbia itself had filed a motion back in October for the case to be dropped entirely, stating that Hollander's compaint "reads like a parody." Hollander responded by amply proving the university's point with the statement that "Women's studies [programs] aid and abet murder.... Where do you think all those lunatic female syndromes come from for excusing murdering incipient human beings, boiling babies, drowning their children, and killing their boyfriends or husbands?"

But as we know well by now, this dude is nothing if not obsessed with getting the last word. Stung by Kaplan's decision, Den Hollander accused the judge of being (horrors!) a feminist, and pouted that "The only thing frivolous and absurd is men looking for justice in the courts of America." In that case, RDH, perhaps you should, I don't know, stop filing boneheaded lawsuits?​

And while there is a lot wrapped up in that, Andi Zeisler's↱ recollection of her articles prompted one telling reaction, when another Twitter user responded↱, "oh shit, it's THAT guy?"

If we look closely, though, we see that Roy Den Hollander has been warning us for even longer than a decade; his 2009 response to Columbia University echoes militant anti-abortion rhetoric. And since at least 2008, there seems to be a habit in some circles of simply referring to him as a douchebag. It's one thing to suggest anyone would be sick of being laughed at, especially after twelve years of it, yet he seems to set himself up for it.

There is very little about this legendary caricature that is unfamiliar; even the New Yorker↱, circa 2007, suggests a shallow comedic archetype, a strange mix of pua, mra, and what eventually becomes mgtow, including an aforementioned belief that "Feminazis have infiltrated institutions", and explains a thesis by which ... er ... ah ...:

"What I think will happen," he said, "is that clubs will reduce the price for guys and increase it for girls. Every guy will have ten or fifteen more dollars in his pocket, which the girls will then manipulate into getting more drinks out of him. If they drink more, they'll have more fun, and so will us guys. And then when she wakes up in the morning she'll be able to do what she always does: blame the man."​

Nonetheless, consider that even an attorney who won the McSorley's decision would agree with Hollander's basic pretense about equality, yet the anti-feminist attorney could not seem to win his complaint against ladies' night.

One thing about the joke that is Roy Den Hollander's infamy: It never really was funny. But, sure, in the context of playing along and not being all humorless or getting triggered as we go, yeah, he was effin' hilarious right up until he wasn't. Just like whatever part of his routine was somehow considered respectable right up to the bitter end.
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Notes:

@andizeisler. "Back in the mid-late 2000s, this man was famous in the feminist blogosphere for harassing anyone who wrote about his many frivolous lawsuits. There was a time when he called the @BitchMedia office regularly." Twitter. 20 July 2020. Twitter.com. 20 July 2020. https://bit.ly/39gLXPU

@Figusss. "oh shit, it’s THAT guy?" Twitter. 20 July 2020. Twitter.com. 20 July 2020. https://bit.ly/2OFpId1

Collins, Lauren. "Hey, La-a-a-dies!" The New Yorker. 30 July 2007. NewYorker.com. 20 July 2020. https://bit.ly/2ZMuHyX

Zeisler, Andi. "Court confirms that feminism is not a religion and that Roy Den Hollander is a waste of its time". BitchMedia. 29 April 2009. BitchMedia.org. 20 July 2020. https://bit.ly/3hlDAVU

—————. "Douchebag lawyer and his douchebag lawsuit". BitchMedia. 18 August 2008. BitchMedia.org. 20 July 2020. https://bit.ly/30xjlOs
 
From my experience in life I think that money is the only thing that really matters to people in life.

Most people only seek money and especially attractive women.

And the more young and attractive a woman is the much more likely it is that she wants to be with a very rich and beautiful male.

So money and good looks basically keep this world go round.
 
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pluto2 said:
From my experience in life I think that money is the only thing that really matters to people in life.

Most people only seek money and especially attractive women.

And the more young and attractive a woman is the much more likely it is that she wants to be with a very rich and beautiful male.

So money and good looks basically keep this world go round.
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I didn't read Tiassa's posts.

But you can go fuck yourself.
 
Maybe your hatred of women is part of something something...

Would you like to become a serial killer? Would that prop your ego?

:EDIT:

The election of Trump is all the excuse you need, isn't it?
 
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pluto2 said:
From my experience in life I think that money is the only thing that really matters to people in life. Most people only seek money and especially attractive women. And the more young and attractive a woman is the much more likely it is that she wants to be with a very rich and beautiful male.
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Don't make the assumption that everyone is like you. They are not.
 
This gets worse, by the way: Roy Den Hollander had cancer; it appears that after years of playing scaramouche, a career clown decided to put on a showstopper. It wasn't just about a girl.

Among advocates for men's rights, lawyer Marc Angelucci was something of a phenomenon, and in a shooting earlier this month, very similar to the attack against the Salas family, the California attorney was slain at his home. It's easy enough to accept the clues suggesting Den Hollander hit his men's rights fellow for professional jealousy; the Daily Beast↱ explains:

Investigators are trying to determine whether the anti-feminist lawyer who allegedly shot up a New Jersey federal judge's family had a hand in the similar death of a rival attorney a week earlier.

In one of his online screeds, "men's rights" lawyer Roy Den Hollander made it clear he blamed U.S. District Judge Esther Salas for robbing him of a legal victory that instead was claimed by activist California attorney Marc Angelucci.

Den Hollander did not name Angelucci in his bile-filled memoir, but law-enforcement sources told The Daily Beast that papers mentioning Angelucci were found in or around the car where Den Hollander killed himself on Monday.

In addition, the head of the organization that Angelucci belonged to revealed that Den Hollander was ousted from the group several years ago because "he was a nut job."​

The final word is out, but if we note Futrelle's↱ suggestion that early signs point to yes, a strange reflection emerges:

On the A Voice for Men website, a eulogy for the murdered Angelucci declares him a "modern martyr like ancient Saint Vincent."

Now it appears that he was martyred by one of his own. Not only by a fellow Men's Rights attorney but one who had once published an article on A Voice for Men and who had been described by AVFM founder Paul Elam as a hero. "As much as I loathe the idea of anyone claiming authority on what a 'real' man is," Elam wrote in a post on the site, "if I had to venture a guess, it would be men like Hollander."

I would call this a great irony except that there's really no irony here at all. The Men's Rights Movement attracts desperate, delusional, angry and unhinged men (and some women fitting the same general description); it's really not a shock to learn that one of these men decided to take revenge on those considered his enemies. Indeed, I've been expecting to see someone with ties to A Voice for Men lose it like this for years; I'm just a little surprised that it turned out to be Den Hollander and not one of the other seemingly more likely candidates.​

It's that last line: Den Hollander's celebrity as an "anti-feminist" attorney includes high-profile coverage of his antics, even showing off his dance skills for Steven Colbert. And while it is easy enough to sympathize with a particular sort of human condition, the clown who laughs to hide his screaming anguish, that doesn't quite work, or, at least, we count it among a range of stupidity having to do with failing to recognize where the real problems lie. Megan Garber↱ reminds of "a mini-celebrity … whose misogyny was dismissed as entertainment":

Den Hollander also, however, left another kind of trail. In the years before terms like incel and toxic masculinity reached the mainstream consciousness, American media outlets gave him their own kinds of hearings. He was a regular presence in newspapers and magazines and on radio and TV shows—in New York City, where his series of sexist nuisance suits turned him into a local anti-celebrity, as well as nationally. He appeared on both Fox News and MSNBC, holding forth about the rule of the "feminazis." He was introduced to the public, in prominent papers, as a "legal eagle" and a "crusading barrister" and a "civil-rights attorney"—and as a reliable source of spectacle. The New Yorker likened him to "a combination of Leon Phelps, Che Guevara, and Travis Bickle." IndieWire once named him its "bachelor of the year." For years, the media metabolized his misogyny as an amusement. The stories about him are scattered around the internet, reminders of how reluctant many were to see his hatred as a threat. He treated sexism as a spectator sport. And media outlets, for a long time, gave him his arena ....

.... It's striking, now, the breeziness with which so many news outlets amplified the voice of a man who wrote, on his well-publicized website, that "females aren't here to soothe the 'savage beast'; the 'savage beast' is here to limit their infinite capacity for evil." And it is notable that one of the corners of the media that did not treat Den Hollander with such easy detachment was the feminist blogosphere. Feminist journalists, much more clearly than their mainstream counterparts, understood that gendered grievance can often turn into gendered violence. They mocked him, too (Jezebel compared him to a recurrent yeast infection), but their mockery had a distinct edge. It warned. It focused on Den Hollander's "hatred for women." As Salon's Amanda Marcotte wrote yesterday, in a piece headlined, in part, "Feminists Have Warned Us": "Den Hollander was just the latest in a long line of men who would rather blame feminism than themselves for their personal failings, and who lash out violently at the world in acts of murder or terrorism."​

And that's what stands out about Futrelle's reflection: There is a part of me that gets it; this one seemed to have his proverbial shit together, so it is easy to expect someone less disciplined would be the one to go off. But that abides the underlying mitigation of what we recognize such behavior to represent. This was funny, right up until it wasn't. But it was only funny because that was the worst it was allowed to be, because something about what he was doing was somehow considered respectable all the way to the spectacularly bitter end.

One of the reasons Angelucci could win when Den Hollander couldn't might actually be the fact of the anti-feminist celebrity turned shooter purusing celebrity. That is, from the time his wife dumped him, at least, he made a public joke of himself, and for whatever reasons, society allowed this.

In that context, Futrelle's idea of Den Hollander, "and not one of the other seemingly more likely candidates", reads almost strangely. A disciplined career clown who spent over a decade pandering for attention, whose summary becomes the disdain and ridicule accrued in response to his awful behavior, does not necessarily sound like an unlikely candidate for neurotic rupture, psychotic breakdown, or however else we might try to describe the decision to put on a coast to coast slaycation showstopper as swan song of a sweeney roy.
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Notes:

Daly, Michael and Tracy Connor. "Professional Jealousy? Cops Probe Whether Lawyer Who Shot Judge's Family Killed Rival Attorney". The Daily Beast. 21 July 2020. TheDailyBeast.com. 22 July 2020. https://bit.ly/32IRIEF

Futrelle, David. "Did Roy Den Hollander also kill fellow Men's Rights lawyer Marc Angelucci? Signs point to 'yes'". We Hunted the Mammoth. 21 July 2020. WeHuntedTheMammoth.com. 22 July 2020. https://bit.ly/2EayI85

Garber, Megan. "Before the Media Treated Him as a Threat, They Treated Him as a Joke". The Atlantic. 22 July 2020. TheAtlantic.com. 22 July 2020. https://bit.ly/3fN4NR4
 
candy said:
Unfortunately education is no guarantee of morality or empathy.
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This is a bit of hero worship, but Freud was intellectual enough to just flat out call people dumbasses if he wanted to. And he was moral and empathic.
 
In "The Interpretation of Dreams", Freud makes a footnote saying all dreams can be traced down to childhood experiences. :?

Yet, unless you're going some emotional distress at the time there's no impulse to care, or remember a dream. (But if you do it can be WTF and daring a repressed memory into consciousness AKA psychoanalysis.)

***

Just that thought should make these lectures seem more complete.

https://www.rasch.org/over.htm
 
Beer w/Straw said:
OK fine. But Jung loved how ground breaking and smart Freud was.

Everyone who studied under Freud agrees, I think.
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Jung studied under Freud in his atheist period then they had a divergence of thought but reconnected later after Freud returned to religious faith.
 
candy said:
Jung studied under Freud in his atheist period then they had a divergence of thought but reconnected later after Freud returned to religious faith.
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The last thing he was writing stuff about chemical imbalance and use of drugs when he died.

Faith, I find hard to believe. I mean, "Civilization and it's Discontents" was the last book he published.

https://canvas.ou.edu/courses/26008/files/1307618

In a word, Religion is population control.
 
​

It's kind of a wicked setup:

In 2015, record-breaking retro game champion Rudy Ferretti made a homebrew game for the Atari 2600. It was called Pigs in the Castle. "I'm tired of all you feminists and your bullshit," he said in a video preceding its launch. It's understood that the pigs in the game are women.

(D'Anastasio↱)​

Sometimes it's hard to tell the misogynists from the anti-feminists.° But such are the trials of the righteous, who stand up against the evil of all those bullshitting feminist pigs:

The game's official Facebook page describes how the purpose of the game is to "kill 100 or more pig bitches to get the boss." He elaborates: "simple???????? Fuck no it's my game it's hard." In a video of the game, preserved on the YouTube channel of "Rudy Ferretti aka the console player of the century," Ferretti's character navigates a pixelated castle killing "evil" pigs.​

And, sure, whatever. Don't be a snowflake, right? Take it for what it is and don't get triggered. I mean, right? It's just a video game, right?

Wait, what was that about triggered?

No, that wasn't intended to be funny. It's just how things go:

On August 10, police in Dover, New Hampshire, discovered Ferretti deceased in his bed. A firearm lay nearby. In the same apartment's living room, police identified the body of his ex-girlfriend, Amy Molter. According to a medical examiner, Molter and Ferretti both died of gunshots to the head—Molter from homicide and Ferretti from suicide, the police suspect. The investigation into the circumstances surrounding the deaths remains ongoing.​

Here are three more paragraphs:

Longtime members of the retro and arcade gaming scene say they warned community leaders and even police about Ferretti's threatening behavior for years. For close to a decade, they say, Ferretti had harassed, stalked, and threatened gamers, particularly women, pushing some out of the niche gaming scene entirely. He flashed guns in tirade YouTube videos and bragged on Facebook about bringing one to an event at the Museum of Pinball in 2017.

Arcade game collector and researcher Catherine DeSpira and video game historian and storage auction buyer Patrick Scott Patterson—two of Ferretti's most public targets—say they collectively contacted police in different states a half-dozen times to report Ferretti's threats against themselves and others. They say those attempts ultimately had no effect. All the while, clusters of retro gamers across the country egged Ferretti on in private messages and on forums, leveraging his apparent instability and misogynist inclinations against women they didn't want in the scene.

"You'd think anyone would look at it and go, 'Hey, this guy's gone, out there,'" says Patterson. "But people weren't doing it. They were emboldening it, pushing him, giving him a support system."​

For her part, DeSpira recalls that Feretti and friends dogpiling threats changed her everyday life, including how she walks down the street, or meets new people.

And sometimes maybe you'd think anyone would look at it and say, hey, that doesn't work out, but people didn't do it, choosing instead to embolden and push difficult attitudes. An example we can find at Sciforums involves the question of Infinite Prevention Advocacy, instructing women to change their lives drastically to account for the fact of men trying to rape them; the counterpoint, of course, is that many men would complain about feminists and their bullshit, turning the whole IPA question on its head to bawl that feminists were telling women to suspect all men. #NotAllMen is a circumstantially misrepresentative—that is to say, inaccurate, and, ultimately, dishonest—reaction against perceptions of evil feminist bullshit.

This is not something out in the aether, distant and unattached. This is part of our living experience, and right now the difference between calling out what doesn't work and or choosing to embolden it isn't quite a matter of not getting triggered, but, rather, of squeezing the trigger.

So goes the story: In 2012, DeSpira was hired to Twin Galaxies, a gaming website.

"That's where the trouble started," she says. "He saw Twin Galaxies as dominated by men, always having men involved, and he liked to see it that way. From the get-go, he was upset about me even being anywhere in proximity to the sacred realm he thought he ruled."

At the time, Ferretti had several records under his belt, on NES games in particular. DeSpira recalled that he wanted a full-page spread in Twin Galaxies devoted to an interview about his accomplishments. A former co-owner, she says, asked her to do it just to "get Rudy off our back." DeSpira balked, but says her manager gave Ferretti her number anyway. "The first words out of his mouth were, 'You fucking cunt,'" she says. She hung up. Afterward, she says, he called and texted her for hours. (The former co-owner did not respond to WIRED's request for comment.) Meanwhile, DeSpira watched as Ferretti was put on trading cards by Twin Galaxies' founder, and received honors at events.

Over the years, DeSpira became Ferretti's primary public target. Ferretti posted regularly on his Facebook page and on YouTube telling DeSpira to "leave the fucking scene." Ferretti publicly called DeSpira names, including "radical pig feminist," "cunt despira," and "one of the 4 horsemen who want to destroy all gaming." He proliferated obscene memes about her and attempted to take down her social media accounts by reporting them to platforms, all while calling DeSpira's credibility as a gamer into question. As she pushed back, it only got worse.​

Of the yearslong harassment campaign, DeSpira recalls, "People didn't take it seriously. They thought of it as entertainment. They thought attacking me, harassing me, and stalking me was entertaining."

Mel Paradise recalls essentially being chased out of the gaming scene because she didn't have a ready-made sprite for Ferretti, who she had never met, when he walked up to her at a 2012 expo and demanded it. Caitlin Oliver left competitive gaming after his three-year stalking campaign, and reflected last week, "I can't imagine how lucky I am to NOT BE DEAD."

We should be clear, in Rudy Ferretti we're talking about someone who actually said, "I can be an asshole. You know why? Because I'm a world champion. I'm a gamer."

The whole circumstance is laced through with multiple ironies; trying to extract and distill them all is probably dangerous. Still ...

… it was a network of institutional failures—from forums to expos to law enforcement—that allowed Ferretti to continue his campaigns for over a decade. "I was trying to tell people this guy Rudy was dangerous and capable of doing exactly what he ended up doing," says Patrick Scott Patterson. "These people were so wrapped up in themselves and their own bullshit that I was considered negative or crazy for daring to say or think."​

No, really, there is a reason it sounds at least a little familiar; anti-feminism is a central component in the bawl against cancel culture.

It's a stark contrast: So wrapped up in bullshit, considered crazy for daring to say or think. To the one, how many times have I heard some version of that from someone complaining about who's the real bigot, or how they're not misogynist or racist or whatever, but that feminism is elitist, or BLM is evil, ad nauseam; to the other, Patterson's iteration includes an actual body count. Unfortunately, that sounds about right. Coming as I do from a generation of humor vicious unto foul, there eventually arises a question of priorities: It's one thing to make a joke, or whatever, but to draw that focus out over the span of years isn't just one word or one occasion or some sort of misunderstanding; we will think what we might of those who apparently cannot discern the difference.

And it's true, dumbasses can rack up body counts for all sorts of stupid ideas. Femicide, though, often feels predictable in particular ways. This wasn't one word, or just a joke, or that one time he lost his temper. This was years spent simmering in hatred so visceral he made a video game about it. What's that? He finally went and killed a woman? And then himself? Well, fuck. Day ends in y, right? It's one thing to say we're not surprised, but this murderlust dressed up in faux reactionary feathers is so not new that we owe some consideration to a glaring question: If we're not surprised, then why embolden, push, give comfort?
____________________

Notes:

° Well, duh.​

D'Anastasio, Cecilia. "Retro Gaming's Misogyny Is Brought to Light After a Violent Tragedy". Wired. 19 August 2020. Wired.com. 21 August 2020. https://bit.ly/2CTO5S0
 
It's better to write a book than to make a point.
No, really. To the one, it's more fun and to the other, it's what I do. To wit:a book.
 
Seattle said:
It's better to write a book than to make a point.
No, really. To the one, it's more fun and to the other, it's what I do. To wit:a book.
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In nonfiction, one starts with the ability to make a point - usually. That way, the book has a chance of being about something. A nonfiction book about misogyny and masculine violence would be a very large project; attempting a simpler point or two, first, might help - or forewarn.

In fiction, not so simply: Novels are of course not "about" anything except possibly their characters - but they rest on accurate observation of one's fellow human beings. As professionals other than John Gardner have pointed out
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18938492-john-gardner-on-writing
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/22/daniel-goleman-focus-10000-hours-myth/
https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/11/06/the-nature-of-fun-david-foster-wallace/
  1. Kurt Vonnegut: How to Write With Style and the 8 Keys to the Power of the Written Word (1985)
    “The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not.”
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https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/03/10/ursula-k-le-guin-writing-advice/
(Two Three books on the general topic: "Steering the Craft", "Dancing At The Edge Of The World", "The Wave In The Mind")
But details don’t matter… I predate the invention of women by decades. Well, if you insist on pedantic accuracy, women have been invented several times in widely varying localities, but the inventors just didn’t know how to sell the product. Their distribution techniques were rudimentary and their market research was nil, and so of course the concept just didn’t get off the ground. Even with a genius behind it an invention has to find its market, and it seemed like for a long time the idea of women just didn’t make it to the bottom line. Models like the Austen and the Brontë were too complicated, and people just laughed at the Suffragette, and the Woolf was way too far ahead of its time
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  • The patterns of the language — the sounds of words.
  • The patterns of syntax and grammar; the way the words and sentences connect themselves together; the ways their connections interconnect to form the larger units (paragraphs, sections, chapters); hence the movement of the work, its tempo, pace, gait, and shape in time.
  • The patterns of the images: what the words make us or let us see with the mind’s eye or sense imaginatively.
  • The patterns of the ideas: what the words and the narration of events make us understand, or use our understanding upon.
  • The patterns of the feelings: what the words and the narration, by using all the above means, make us experience emotionally or spiritually, in areas of our being not directly accessible to or expressible in words.
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As well as researchers, such as Jerome Bruner:
Make no mistake about it: it is not simply as technicians that we are being called, but as adjutants to the moralist.
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The writing of a book - any book - involves one in matters of ethics, morality, and justice, in other words.
Good luck with that.
 
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I think it's all about looks:

if you're sinister looking and not a chad people and especially young women aren't going to like you.

Looks are the main factor.

Women and normies have more tolerance with good looking.

If a Chad have one of the things that make a incel vibe (bad aura, bad body language and the pheromones) people will not Care
If a ugly person have just one of this things , he will probably be excluded.
Ugly people don't have the right to do many mistakes

A person's looks matters more than many people are willing to admit. Good-looking people are treated better by others and evidence also shows they also earn more money.

And don't forget that looks matter quite a lot especially to young women too.

Mod Edit

Removed link to incel forum/hate site that advocates rape and violence against women
 
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