MRA throws entitled hissy fit, commits mass murder

Anti-MRA seems a rabbit-hole we've been down nearly as many times as GZ. (Honestly, before long we won't have to have discussions on this site, we'll just hurl our favored acrynoms at one another).

What I think is going to emerge as the special element in this case is that his parents reported him to the police and the police interviewed him and found him polite. (I'm going by the parents' lawyer as reported in USA today, so I'll want this confirmed by a better source).

Usually, in the wake of these incidents, we wring our hands and say "Why didn't anyone near him notice and intervene?" If what has been reported is true, it's going to ratchet up anxiety and despair over these incidents one degree further. People can notice. People can intervene. And it still doesn't do anything. The killer just temporarily puts on a calm face and then goes on with his plans.

As long as we're doing ideological analysis of the messages that society sends that played into this young man's twisted thinking, though, I'll say this. In his video, it comes through how hard he takes it that he's twenty-two years old and still a virgin. Where's he getting the message that that's a problem? Were he sufficiently steeped in Christian thinking, for example, he could have taken pride in remaining a virgin until he is married. I say this for several reasons. One, Christianity comes in for a good deal of bashing on this site, so when there's a case where its principles might steered matters in a more favorable direction, it should be credited for elements of its ideology that are superior to those of the presently dominant ideology in our culture: secular humanism. Two, Christianity is generally regarded as patriarchal, so we may have to get more precise in our targeting than just honing in on "patriarchy" as the explanation for this horror. Three, it would just make this whole thread more bearable if there's something more than MRA in the mix.

The perp. is guilty of very confused thinking, imo. How did he imagine that killing people would help him with his sexual frustration?

Or with anything else, come to that.

If you already conclude what the story is about from your topic title, it kind off makes RD debate a bit stranger :jokersmiley:

Aren't basically all spree killers seeking revenge for real or perceived social exclusion? I don't put a lot of effort into researching spree killers in general, but that's what I've noticed from news stories. Which makes this guy fit the profile exactly and making his exact reasoning just a flavor in the big picture.

Just for example if his problem was that he couldn't get a job, despite submitting hundreds of applications. So he made a video about he deserved to be able to work and support himself and then killed a bunch of store managers in a similar fashion would we be right in blaming his entitled complex on Communism? No we wouldn't, but I'm sure some people would because it's a nice way to win "points" politically. Which is exactly what you are doing here Cheezy.

The pick up artist (PUA) community is similar but fairly different from the MRA community from what I've seen and generally a bit more dangerous. Most MRAs seem to be middle aged men who wound up on the wrong side of a divorce and are now just bitter about it. Whereas the PUA community is more focused on "getting laid", what is really hilarious is that they somehow think this has something to do with empowering men. But anyway I don't currently see what makes this spree shooting drastically different than the rest.

All in all MRAs exist opposite "Tumblr Feminism" and approximately as silly and harmless.

To sum up social disenfranchisement in any fashion is a real problem and seems to be the cause of spree shootings. Failures with women are a common form of social disenfranchisement and a difficult one to get help for. I'm certainly not suggesting that women should feel compelled to sleep with weirdos to stave off spree shootings. Just that weirdos not being able to get laid is and always will be a basic fact and frustrated people who don't feel like they can fully participate in society will with some (low) probability go on spree shootings. Not everything can (or should) be solved.

ITT: we associate and deny mental instability and illness while simultaneously applying an overbroad label to people we don't like and insinuating they're all mass murderers waiting to happen. All communists are apologists for Stalin and Mao though, so it makes sense.

nc-1701 said:

Aren't basically all spree killers seeking revenge for real or perceived social exclusion? I don't put a lot of effort into researching spree killers in general, but that's what I've noticed from news stories. Which makes this guy fit the profile exactly and making his exact reasoning just a flavor in the big picture.

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"I don't know anything about it, but I have an firm opinion on it anyway."

Just for example if his problem was that he couldn't get a job, despite submitting hundreds of applications. So he made a video about he deserved to be able to work and support himself and then killed a bunch of store managers in a similar fashion would we be right in blaming his entitled complex on Communism? No we wouldn't, but I'm sure some people would because it's a nice way to win "points" politically. Which is exactly what you are doing here Cheezy.

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A worker's belief that he is entitled to a job is nothing like a man's belief that he is entitled to a vagina. It's pretty abhorrent that you could equate the two.

Anyway, communists reject terrorism as a political tool because it is an individualistic venting of anger and does not build an organized worker's mass-movement to contest bourgeois state power. Thus, an act such as you describe would be rejected by communists out of hand, even though they might understand and sympathize with his feelings, and probably wouldn't feel much remorse for the fate of the managers either.

On the other hand, what has been the response of the MRA community? They have rushed to his defense, of course. The PUA site mentioned in the OP went through the trouble of deleting his contributions to their page, and attempted to distance themselves from his actions, but they're still doubling down on the cause, which was the very attitudes about gender relations which they perpetuate.

The pick up artist (PUA) community is similar but fairly different from the MRA community from what I've seen and generally a bit more dangerous. Most MRAs seem to be middle aged men who wound up on the wrong side of a divorce and are now just bitter about it. Whereas the PUA community is more focused on "getting laid", what is really hilarious is that they somehow think this has something to do with empowering men. But anyway I don't currently see what makes this spree shooting drastically different than the rest.

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In my experience MRAs and their ilk are just like this: young men who are angry that the women they feel entitled to do not want them. "Involuntary celibate" is the term they use, which this guy also used to describe himself, indicating a familiarity with their ideas.

All in all MRAs exist opposite "Tumblr Feminism" and approximately as silly and harmless.

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Apparently not...

Also, people on the internet don't exist only on the internet. They're real people who go through real lives interacting with other real people. "Tumbler feminists" are just as much feminists outside the internet as they are on it, and MRAs and their ilk are just the same kind of entitled misogynists in real life as they are on the internet.

In the OP I linked to another mass murder event which was specifically and vocally directed at feminists.

To sum up social disenfranchisement in any fashion is a real problem and seems to be the cause of spree shootings. Failures with women are a common form of social disenfranchisement and a difficult one to get help for. I'm certainly not suggesting that women should feel compelled to sleep with weirdos to stave off spree shootings. Just that weirdos not being able to get laid is and always will be a basic fact and frustrated people who don't feel like they can fully participate in society will with some (low) probability go on spree shootings. Not everything can (or should) be solved.

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Dismissing it as "something that just happens" doesn't do anything for it either.



I find it very telling how quickly the men in this thread have rushed to render various parts of this issue as either meaningless or incapable of being solved. Nothing says classy like trivializing murder and its causes.

Farm Boy said:

ITT: we associate and deny mental instability and illness while simultaneously applying an overbroad label to people we don't like and insinuating they're all mass murderers waiting to happen. All communists are apologists for Stalin and Mao though, so it makes sense.

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Asperger's Syndrome is not mental instability or illness.

Nor have I insinuated that any man can become a mass murderer. What I have pointed out is that the ideas which motivated this man are ideas which all men are influenced by. That's why denying the political implications and influences of this event is so incredibly dangerous (and also why I made a thread about it in a forum dominated by men), because if we pretend that they do not exist and were not present in this man's mind in an active way which influenced his decision-making, then we ignore their influence over us and other men as well, and could be led to making similar decisions based on what we consider to be "rational" thinking. We must be conscious of this cultural influence which regards men and women in such ways, so that we do not become entitled jerks who think women owe us their vaginas, and do not blame women for issues which are actually the fault of men trying to regulate everyone's behavior for their own benefit.

But hey, why be critical of an issue, when you can be snarky instead? This is an RD thread, don't drop by just to post provocative things without engaging with the material.

@Cheezy - what is it exactly that you wish to discuss in this thread? The OP doesn't make it clear (and an RD OP should). It's more of a soapbox type thing, but then you seem to not want people to disagree with you or challenge your argument's potential weaknesses, so I don't think you're meaning to pose the MRA association as a question to be contested. It'd be helpful, then, if you were to outline some direction for discussion?

I don't think it is an issue incapable of improvement. I just think Gori's closer to it than the argument laid out in the OP. Is oversexualizing both women and men an MRA issue/patriarchy issue or is it broader? Is mass violence a mental health issue, or can it only be an aspy issue if the individual had that. Like Autism ''crowds out'' all other mental concerns? Those two things just seem really weird to me Cheezy.

Cheezy the Wiz said:

"I don't know anything about it, but I have an firm opinion on it anyway."

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And you do know something about it?

A worker's belief that he is entitled to a job is nothing like a man's belief that he is entitled to a vagina. It's pretty abhorrent that you could equate the two.

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In our society getting and keeping a stable job and stable relationships are the two real status symbols required to be considered a functioning adult. They aren't as far apart as you imply, further a relationship is much more than a vagina. I think it's clear if he just wanted a vagina he could have bought one.

Anyway, communists reject terrorism as a political tool because it is an individualistic venting of anger and does not build an organized worker's mass-movement to contest bourgeois state power. Thus, an act such as you describe would be rejected by communists out of hand, even though they might understand and sympathize with his feelings, and probably wouldn't feel much remorse for the fate of the managers either.

On the other hand, what has been the response of the MRA community? They have rushed to his defense, of course. The PUA site mentioned in the OP went through the trouble of deleting his contributions to their page, and attempted to distance themselves from his actions, but they're still doubling down on the cause, which was the very attitudes about gender relations which they perpetuate.

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Right Communists reject terrorism. Where do you see anything saying MRA/PUA don't reject terrorism? The reactions you described in these two paragraphs are almost identical, condemn the action but sympathize with the some of the beliefs that led to it.

In my experience MRAs and their ilk are just like this: young men who are angry that the women they feel entitled to do not want them. "Involuntary celibate" is the term they use, which this guy also used to describe himself, indicating a familiarity with their ideas.

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I think what you are describing are closer to PUAs, but there is probably a lot of overlap. Regardless it's an entirely semantic difference so we can stop here.

Dismissing it as "something that just happens" doesn't do anything for it either.


I find it very telling how quickly the men in this thread have rushed to render various parts of this issue as either meaningless or incapable of being solved. Nothing says classy like trivializing murder and its causes.

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Except lots of things "just happen" and usually and trying to cure them is a lot more dangerous than letting them happen. Spree shooters are a perfect example of this.

Camikaze said:

@Cheezy - what is it exactly that you wish to discuss in this thread? The OP doesn't make it clear (and an RD OP should). It's more of a soapbox type thing,

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I'm not sure how the "soapboxes" work, really, but I wouldn't care to have it turned into such a thing, from what I have seen. I intended this as a thread to talk about sexism and patriarchy, with the case subject of the news story. I made it RD to discourage the drive-by trolls and nonsense.

but then you seem to not want people to disagree with you or challenge your argument's potential weaknesses,

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Is this what contesting an argument is now? I'm not allowed to argue a point or disagree with others?

Cheezy the Wiz said:

Asperger's Syndrome is not mental instability or illness.

Nor have I insinuated that any man can become a mass murderer. What I have pointed out is that the ideas which motivated this man are ideas which all men are influenced by. That's why denying the political implications and influences of this event is so incredibly dangerous (and also why I made a thread about it in a forum dominated by men), because if we pretend that they do not exist and were not present in this man's mind in an active way which influenced his decision-making, then we ignore their influence over us and other men as well, and could be led to making similar decisions based on what we consider to be "rational" thinking. We must be conscious of this cultural influence which regards men and women in such ways, so that we do not become entitled jerks who think women owe us their vaginas, and do not blame women for issues which are actually the fault of men trying to regulate everyone's behavior for their own benefit.

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You may not feel you have insinuated that any man can become a mass murderer, but your express reason for posting is to ward men off from the kind of thinking that you believe caused this mass murder.

Cheezy the Wiz said:

Nothing says classy like trivializing murder and its causes.

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And Cheezy, this is what some of us feel you are doing by linking this case to MRA.

Cheezy the Wiz said:

I find it very telling how quickly the men in this thread have rushed to render various parts of this issue as either meaningless or incapable of being solved. Nothing says classy like trivializing murder and its causes.

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I've proposed the Christian valorization of pre-marital chastity as a possible solution. Seems like it could have taken a lot of pressure off this guy. You may not like it as a solution, but it at least shows I don't regard the problem as incapable of being solved.

Farm Boy said:

I don't think it is an issue incapable of improvement. I just think Gori's closer to it than the argument laid out in the OP. Is oversexualizing both women and men an MRA issue/patriarchy issue or is it broader? Is mass violence a mental health issue, or can it only be an aspy issue if the individual had that. Like Autism ''crowds out'' all other mental concerns? Those two things just seem really weird to me Cheezy.

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I didn't respond to Gori's comments because I kind of agree with them. Yeah, there is an issue of "why didn't we pick this up sooner?" It's true that we don't have the kind of medical care we need for mental health issues, but what's really worrying is, despite the extensive paper trail left by this guy, where he makes his attitudes and intentions about this clear, we're still standing here afterwards going "but he didn't send us adequate signals!" "We didn't know!" And the most horrifying, "how do we know it was misogyny?" It's all there in the videos and comments he posted over the years (which I believe one of the articles I linked to in the OP links to).

nc-1701 said:

And you do know something about it?

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I didn't make the claim, you did. And when you did, you said you don't know much about it, but yet you seem to know enough apparently to make a sweeping dismissal of my position!

In our society getting and keeping a stable job and stable relationships are the two real status symbols required to be considered a functioning adult. They aren't as far apart as you imply, further a relationship is much more than a vagina. I think it's clear if he just wanted a vagina he could have bought one.

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So, you agree that these are perceptions we[as a society] created about ourselves, and that he was influenced by them? Because there's nothing inherent to either employment or romance which makes us "better" or "valid" for possessing them.

The difference being that a job is required in order to exist in capitalist society. It's where we get money from, which we need to get the necessities of life. A mate is not. So I think someone being denied a job has a far bigger right to be angry than a guy who's relying on his male privilege to get him a woman, and is failing.

A far better comparison would be not an unemployed worker taking out his anger on would-be employers, but rather a capitalist, who takes out his anger at not being able to find workers who will work for the miserably low wages he is offering, and so deciding to shoot some random workers (or perhaps the workers he wanted, but could not convince to work for him) out of misguided anger.

Right Communists reject terrorism. Where do you see anything saying MRA/PUA don't reject terrorism? The reactions you described in these two paragraphs are almost identical, condemn the action but sympathize with the some of the beliefs that led to it.

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Except that MRAs and men in general are rushing to defend him.

Except lots of things "just happen" and usually and trying to cure them is a lot more dangerous than letting them happen. Spree shooters are a perfect example of this.

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No, nothing "Just happens." Actions have causes. Actions by people come from decisions made by them. Their decisions are products of how they understand themselves and the world around them. Their understanding is very heavily influenced by the predominant social understanding of those things. The predominant social understanding of those things originates from and is reinforced by everyday actions and interactions, and the reproduction of ideas which justify them. See: the link on cultural hegemony, which I posted a few posts ago.

Gori the Grey said:

And Cheezy, this is what some of us feel you are doing by linking this case to MRA.

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And that's all kinds of ridiculous, as I have argued in turn. This story is a poster-child for Men's Rights and misogyny, and this attitude of yours is trying to neuter that implication.

These six girls are dead because this boy wanted their vaginas and couldn't have them. He expressly says so. This is not me injecting politics into this, he says it himself. It's there. You trying to ignore it is you trying remove the most important part of his motivation. Without that, it's a human killing six other humans, which is really what's insulting to the victims.

It would be like saying that we shouldn't focus on the anti-semitism of a person who murdered a bunch of Jews, because that's insulting to the victims. No, we should dismiss it as something that just happens. He was crazy. He was lonely and lacked self-esteem. Anything but his anti-semitism. Would you really say that?

Since there seems to be such a fuss about this MRA stuff and whether it was political, here. Read the devil's own words.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/05/24/315624700/alleged-shooter-in-california-left-vast-digital-trail?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20140525

Sheriff Bill Brown had earlier on Saturday said a YouTube video titled was connected to the crime.

In it, Rodger is sitting in a parked car with the sun low on the horizon. He talks about his frustration with women and says that at age 22, he was still a virgin.

"You never showed me any mercy, so I will show you none," he says, laughing. "I'll give you exactly what you deserve — all of you. All you girls who rejected me and looked down upon me and treated me like scum, while you gave yourself to other men. And all of you men for living a better life than me. All of you sexually active men. I hate you."

Rodger warns that this will be his last video and that he will "slaughter every single one of you."

Rodger seems to have left a vast digital trail. , for example, he uploaded multiple videos musing on his loneliness.

, "Why do girls hate me so much?"

He wonders why it is that someone who owns a nice car, expensive glasses and is the "ultimate gentleman" cannot attract girls.

"I'm so magnificent. I deserve girls much more than all those slobs I see in my college, who are somehow able to walk around with beautiful girls," he says.

In a video : "I temporarily took all of my Vlog's down due to the alarm it caused with some people in my family. I will post more updates in the future."

A user who calls himself Elliot Rodger and uses the same picture, also posted to a bodybuilding message board expressing the same regrets.

Journalist Matthew Keys , in which Rodger says "feminism is evil."

"Women have control over which men get sex and which men don't, thus having control over which men breed and which men don't," the user writes. "Feminism gave women the power over the future of the human species. Feminism is evil."

On what appears to be , Rodger says that he was born in Britain and moved the U.S. at age 5. He writes that he is currently attending college at Santa Barbara City College, Moorpark College.

"I have tried very hard to fit in with the social scene there, but I have ultimately been unable to do so," he writes. "There are too many obnoxious people who have ruined my whole experience at that place."

What appears to be is full of selfies that show an extravagant lifestyle — and . There's also , where a stern-looking Rodger poses with his father amid blooming flowers.

Rodger is the son of Hollywood director , who was an assistant director on The Hunger Games.

The Associated Press , an attorney who represents Elliot's father, Peter Rodger. Shifman told the wire service that Elliot Rodger "was diagnosed at an earlier age of being a highly-functional Asperger Syndrome child."

Shifman said that his parents were concerned a few weeks ago after watching a few YouTube videos "regarding suicide and the killing of people." Shifman said Rodger had "multiple therapists" and a social worker was concerned enough last week that she called police.

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Cheezy the Wiz said:

It involves women, it's a political issue. That makes it a political view.

Yes, it has to do with "psychological problems" like rejection, low self-esteem, etc. But how he manifested those feelings, how he understood them, that's the political part. He blamed women, and he lashed out against them. That's political, because it was caused by living in a patriarchal society, where the domination of men is indeed quite political (it's something which literally involves every single person in society).

But it was still created by men to justify a patriarchal society, and structure and define the roles, actions, and identities of both men and women. If men were not taught to value women only as objects of sex, and were not taught to value themselves based upon their success at obtaining said female sexual objects (what people in the pick-up artist community refer to "conquests"), then he would not have experienced such feelings of low self-esteem and rejection. That's why this is indeed patriarchy biting men in the ass [chivalry merely being one extension of patriarchy, and one which is particularly inspirational to young men who wish to prove themselves adequate as Men], and not the fault of women, who are just pawns in the patriarchal game of men dominating all of society, including "lesser" men.

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OK I disagree but having trouble explaining why exactly. I think it's because I don't see wanting women's vaginas to be the primary issue. I think it has more to do with how he feels about himself. Because he hasn't been able to establish a relationship with a woman he feels like less of a man and it's quite possible that he's socially awkward and has low self esteem and has been told he's a loser all his life. Actually I don't know if this is the case but I think we're talking about the hypothetical of the particular case and not necessarily about what actually happened. If women's vaginas were all he were after, couldn't he just find a prostitute or an unattractive woman? I think he wants a woman's attention, to be loved and nurtured.

You could say his need to find self esteem through having had sex is related to a patriarchal society that values men by their sexual prowess which is a way that the patriarchy can negatively effect men. We also don't try to build up men's self esteem the way we do with women as much.

I don't think pick up artists really have much to do with chivalry. They just seem sleazy to me, not like old time gentlemen.

I don't really spend any time checking out men's rights message boards so I don't know what they think very much. From what I have seen, they seem to be upset about what they see as special rights for women, such as promotion of women in male dominated fields for example. Do they really complain about women not going out with them? Is that really a political issue?

So, unless he has mentioned he's a men's rights activist I don't really see this as being related or political. It seems like you're saying, I think men's rights activists are misogynist, I think this man is misogynist because he expects women to have sex with him, therefore these issues are related.

Cheezy the Wiz said:

We need to talk about this. Not just as a news story, not just as yet another mass murder event, but specifically with regards to sex and patriarchy.

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I don't know what to talk about regarding the patriarchy (i.e. whatever bogeyman the speaker feels it covers), but I suppose we can talk about how this violence connects to sex in our current society.

But I do believe nc-1701 hit the nail on the head regarding the killing sprees themselves:

nc-1701 said:

Aren't basically all spree killers seeking revenge for real or perceived social exclusion? I don't put a lot of effort into researching spree killers in general, but that's what I've noticed from news stories. Which makes this guy fit the profile exactly and making his exact reasoning just a flavor in the big picture.

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So what was it about this particular flavour of social exclusion:

Cheezy the Wiz said:

It's easy to see the "chivalrous" root to his perceptions: he deserves women, because he does the right things, and should win a woman for being sensitive or kind or subservient or whatever. [...] He deserves a woman, because he is a man.

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That is the standard social contract for the last couple millennia, isn't it? Follow society's rules, and there will be one man for each woman and one woman for each man, with duties and privileges for each...

That worked for a long time, but the industrial revolution, cheap energy, proper medicine, the equality of women and finally the sexual revolution of the 70's completely changed the game. It's no longer enough to simply be one out of many, a simple cog in the machine. Young people today can not expect to just go through life with no initiative and having their families or society help set them up with a spouse.

I think that has made it much, much harder for a lot of people: Now they are on their own, and they have to navigate the world through their own initiative. This is especially difficult for those who traditionally were seen as a bit clumsy or weird or special in their little village. Now they live in big cities and are competing against the rest of the world. Nobody has time to get to know them except superficially as the weird/crazy/creepy person.

The cultural message is still that in the end, everyone can end up with someone. But the message is extremely limited in how one goes about ending up with someone, and both men and women are struggling with that. The men who are socially awkward, and especially those who suffer from autism, struggle especially hard, as initiating contact while coming across as socially competent can be a hard skill to master.

Those who can't succeed runs a big chance of ending up feeling that society has abandoned them, all the time the cultural messages they grew up which promised them a happy ending turns out to be a lie.

Some of them might turn to blind/random violence against their perceived tormenters to avenge themselves. Luckily we're talking about a very limited number with this potential.

nc-1701 said:

Whereas the PUA community is more focused on "getting laid", what is really hilarious is that they somehow think this has something to do with empowering men.

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Well, procreating, or as having children isn't as necessary in our current society, getting laid, is both a biological urge, a societal expectation and has been part of the standard plan of being an adult, both now and in earlier times.

Failing in achieving this elementary part of being an adult is something a lot of people feel very ashamed about. And in our current society, the message comes in loud and clear: Everyone who is worth anything can get laid at will from their mid-teens to old age - and successful men until forever! The sexual revolution set sexuality free, and in theory made it cheap and available for everyone. Failing to get laid these days simply feels like an even greater failure compared to how it is perceived to have been before.

Getting laid is empowering for those who have never gotten laid, even though they feel they are following all the old rules and are behaving like good little citisens.

For those who have had a couple girlfriends and haven't felt alienated from girls it probably sounds very silly, but for the have-nots it is actually important.

nc-1701 said:

To sum up social disenfranchisement in any fashion is a real problem and seems to be the cause of spree shootings. Failures with women are a common form of social disenfranchisement and a difficult one to get help for. I'm certainly not suggesting that women should feel compelled to sleep with weirdos to stave off spree shootings. Just that weirdos not being able to get laid is and always will be a basic fact and frustrated people who don't feel like they can fully participate in society will with some (low) probability go on spree shootings. Not everything can (or should) be solved.

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Of course women shouldn't feel compelled to sleep with people they find unattractive. There are reasons why they find some men unattractive, and the easiest - and most correct - way of trying to fix this, is to deal with the unattractive traits of those men.

I believe the PUA community ('PUA' sounds so very silly, but whatever) can actually help with this, or more precisely, I think the PUAs are on a somewhat right track.

Another thing, just because we don't agree with your analysis of this horrific murder doesn't mean we are trivializing it.

Cheezy the Wiz said:

This story is a poster-child for Men's Rights and misogyny

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Misogyny yes. Entitlement, yes. (Though notice that he's nearly as angry at the men that do get women as he is at women themselves, and at least one of the victims was a man). Men's Rights, probably not. He's not the 40-year old disputing the divorce judgment that only lets him see his kids two weekends a month. Or the new father that wants longer paternity leave.

I think it's the phrase "men's rights" (lowercase) that grinds your gears: that men should even think they need rights when they're already so favored by our patriarchal society! Yes, the sense of entitlement that our still largely patriarchal culture confers on men is clearly a component in this case. But the "rights" that the MRM pushes for, even if they are underwritten by the same sense of entitlement, are not the same objectives as those of the douchebag PUA community.

I realize that "the sense of male entitlement fostered by our still patriarchal culture" doesn't have the snappiness for a thread title as MRA. But, remember, you're trying to encourage nuanced consideration of this issue. At least that's what the content of your posts says. But not its tone.

And keep in mind how much tone matters. I'm struck by how many of the posters in this site are young men in a similar circumstance of emotional vulnerability relative to young women they like. Look on the rants and raves section where every time they get a date or don't it's a terribly discouraging or happy development in their lives. If we present the importance of respect for women in such a strident, hectoring tone, as a matter for ideological oneupsmanship, we're just going to turn those young men off to the idea.

But you say Asperger's isn't a mental illness? How is this? It's a mental phenomenon which causes distress to its sufferers isn't it?

How is that not a mental illness? I ask for information.