James, you never answered my request for clarification about “entitlement”, and whether you thought that George Sordini was somebody who became violent out of frustrated entitlement. I brought this up, because you have claimed that you personally feel no sense of entitlement to anything.

Yet you self-identify as an MRA. MRAs — Men’s Rights Activists — only exist in the first place because of male entitlement. They believe that men, who since the beginning of recorded history up to the present day have enjoyed far more freedom, wealth, and privilege than women have, need to have all of these entitlements preserved and strengthened. Now, it will be a bit difficult having a decent conversation with you because you disagree that there is a Patriarchy (that there is a system in place which, at any particular level of society’s heirarchy, gives men advantages over women the majority of the time).

This is very important. It’s at the core of all of our disagreements. But it’s also an argument that never seems to get anywhere. So for now, I’ll take a different tack. Before, I wrote:

Your claim that violent anti-male feminist commentary is both equally extreme and equally prevalent is dubious to say the least. Yes, there will always be extremists for every point of view. Their distressing prevalence in the MRAsphere, and the extent to which they are tolerated, does, in fact, say something about MRA ideology as a whole.

Your response was that Lisa unfairly filtered for the loonier responses. Lisa then denied this. If it could be shown to your satisfaction that MRA commentary does, in fact, tend to be filled with misogyny to a grossly unacceptable level, that it would be a valid way to judge that there is something rotten in the MRA movement?

Mind you, I already know that this would be impossible, since you are an MRA, you presumably spend more time at MRA blogs than you do here, and you already know intimately what goes on in the comment sections of MRA blogs. Either you turn a blind eye to the bad stuff, or worse, you don’t share my value system about which stuff is “bad stuff” and you like the bad stuff too.

Still, just as an exercise for my own entertainment, let’s look at some MRA comments. Since this is still Lisa’s thread, I’ll do this by Googling the search terms that Lisa said she used: “George Sodini MRA”.

Some time has passed, so the results have changed a bit. Now you have to wade through a lot of feminist blog posts, such as the one on this very page, which are all disturbed by the MRA reactions.

Editing out the non-MRA sites, here are the first five MRA hits.

1. Author engages in communal blame for George Sodini’s spree
On this page, I judge 6 out of 8 comments to be either showing undue sympathy for George Sodini’s situation or expressing hatred against women.

2. George Sodini and the contract between the sexes
It gets harder to judge here– I guess I shouldn’t count entries just because they believe that power is tipped in women’s favor (that is, deny the existence of the Patriarchy), but if the author uses words like “bitch” or “feminazi” or “whore”, I’ll count it as hateful. Counting the author’s own comments as hateful (because his thesis is), I call… aw, fuck, there’s 52 comments! And a lot of them are LONG! I don’t want to wade through them all…

Okay, this just ceased being fun. Forget about a proper tally. I don’t have time. Suffice it to say that there are already several comments not only feeling bad for that poor fella George Sodini, but also suggesting things like that women share the responsibility for Sodini’s crime, that he was a victim of women, etc. You can go look for yourself.

3. Sex-starved aerobics killer George Sodini was upset by women
An ugly, ugly thread. I mean, okay, feel sympathy for George Sodini– he was clearly a human being in pain– but, y’know, you men might try out feeling some sympathy for his victims too and see what that does for you. I’ll be generous and say only 11 out 17 are very objectionable. Though if you unpack the assumptions underlying nearly all of the others…

4. Author engages in communal blame for George Sodini’s spree (linking to previously cited article with same name)
Only one comment. Not particularly objectionable, though showing sympathy for Sodini.

5. Oh, brother.
This is on a blog entitled “Female Misogynist” with an address of “malechauvinist.blogpot.com”. Somewhat surprisingly, there is no irony here– the perspective it’s written from is precisely what you’d expect. Yes, he/she appears to self-identify as an MRA. Thankly, there’s only two comments. Then again, the author links here, to a Pick-Up Artist site which is just as ridiculously over-the-top, which has 262 comments. But as it’s not explicitly an MRA website, I won’t count its results.

I could keep going, but I have to hop on a train soon. So, anyway, point is– comments like the ones Lisa highlighted are not just the rare exceptions. Misogyny is the Men’s Right’s Movement’s mainstream. But of course, anyone who is an MRA already knows this, even if they won’t admit it.

I think then she has to decide what she wants. If you aren’t getting what you want…change the relationship or end it. Easier said than done, but inaction won’t help and you can’t get that time back.