While I strive to see the best in everyone, there is simply one person I cannot— misogynistic blogger and self-proclaimed pickup artist Roosh V.
It’s no mystery many people find Roosh to be a disgusting excuse for a human being. He is not only unapologetically misogynistic and homophobic, but he routinely publishes vile and disgusting things regarding women and homosexuals.
From his lists of qualities that are wrong with the modern American women to his list of things that all American women must do to make themselves more attractive for men, Roosh doesn’t leave any anti-female stone unturned. In a world where women are constantly competing to be viewed as more than just a body with a pretty face, bloggers such as Roosh are doing more harm than good to their struggle and the impressionable minds of young men.
It is with his misogynistic blog that Roosh is encouraging the idea that rape is no big deal, that it is almost a laughable matter to him and his followers.
One of his posts has recently made its way to mainstream media thanks to its harmful, degrading and downright disgusting material. In a blogpost on his website, titled “How to Stop Rape,” Roosh explains that the only way to completely put an end to all rape is to “make rape legal if done on private property.”
He deems that the violent and unwanted taking of a women should be made legal and not punishable by law if it is done off of public grounds. His idea is that under his proposed law, a girl will protect her body and not get into a situation in which she is in an impaired state of mind. Roosh stands up and attempts to offer support for men who have had sex with or have thought of having sex with a woman who was under the influence and was unable to consent.
I don’t know about you, but I personally don’t go out and drink with my friends in the hopes that some random guy from Shenanigans or the Fox is going to pick me up and take me home. In most cases, many of us venture out into the nightlife scene in hopes to relive some of the stress from the week be it from school or work. Roosh argues that if by chance I were to be even slightly under the influence, tipsy as many of us call it, that someone could still rape me on private grounds and it would be perfectly alright.
Arguing that by our attempts to teach men not to rape that in return we have actually taught women not to care about being raped and to not protect themselves from such an “easily preventable” act as being raped. Roosh attempts to take claim that the reason that his proposed idea is appropriate is because in his eyes women do not protect themselves as well as they protect the things that are important to them such as their purse or their phone.
While many do protect their phones well, I’m certain that we attempt to protect our bodies in a much more serious manner than Roosh believes women do; from pocket knives, pepper spray, martial art training and boxing, to those of us who have our CHLs and carry when out and about many women are more than prepared to protect themselves. However, there are cases in which a women is overpowered and unable to use the things she has on herself to protect and get away from a proposed rapist.
Roosh fails to see and acknowledge the idea that women do care about their safety even when “entering a bedroom with the wrong man.”
Roosh also fails or rather denies to explore the other side of the argument that men be held accountable for harboring these thoughts of rape and being the “wrong men” as he so likes to call them in his proposal. The idea that this misogynistic writer chooses to ignore that men are just as much in the wrong in his disturbing idea is just a reflection on the type of man he is in his own life.
Publishing his own sexual encounters online, some rather detailed while others are straight to the point, Roosh pushes the lines and boundaries of what is actual consent and what could be considered rape.
He reported and bragged about many of his sexual exploits, and has even admitted to many instances in which most would consider to be rape in which many of the women were reluctant to or could not give full consent to during the time of their encounter.
Roosh not only published his degrading message online, but he then set up times and places for his followers to hold meet and greets with one another on what he deemed “International Meetup Day” on February 6 of this year.
However, upon the release of the locations and after being met with protesters threatening to mobilize and take action against Roosh himself and those who believed in his ideas, and those opposed to these meetups happening their towns, he quickly canceled the entire meetup day. He claimed that he could “no longer guarantee the safety or privacy of the men who want to attend.”
It’s quite hysterical that the man who attempts to push the idea that women are merely children who need “daddy government” to protect them if they follow the rape culture and believe the idea that rape of all forms is wrong, could possibly need help from the same “daddy government” that he claims enables women.
When met with all of the backlash regarding his “How to Stop Rape” blog, he quickly made a revision to the post online adding the note at the begging of the post stating that the post was meant to be a satire.
While Roosh can claim that his post was meant to by hysterical and a satire on the idea of rape, it’s unnerving that he only made this claim after people became up in arms regarding his subject matter and the idea of making rape on private property legal, he was perfectly content without he added note on his post leading others to believe the post to be a serious idea when he didn’t have people making threats against him.
While he can claim that his blog was a simple modern day satire like Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, it is the posts, the subject matter of the posts and the way that he so sarcastically and degradingly handle the topic of women being raped that Roosh even further warps the ideals and stigmas surrounding rape culture.