The second installment of my Emotional Manipulation in the Media series. This one is all about how using certain words and phrases instill fear and why that is such a powerful tool for the media and others.
As I mentioned in the last post, I will be analyzing the following article: Pro-Rape 'Men's Rights' Group Plans Saturday Rally in Chicago. Obviously, this is far too late to be posted before the event. And it turns out that this article, along with a lot of other fear mongering, has gotten the event cancelled anyway. But, because this one took a whole lot more outside research than anticipated, it's coming out a little later than I'd hoped.
The writer of this article, Linze Rice, has made part of my job very easy and part of it very hard. But even just looking at the title it's easy to see what she's trying to do.
I've highlighted the two parts of the sentence that serve my purpose. The first being the words, "Pro Rape". Calling someone (or a group of people) "Pro-Rape" or saying they think rape is a good thing is a very serious thing to do. I don't think there is a sane person on the planet who is actually pro-rape, including this man. But we'll get to him in a second. The second one is less obvious, " 'Men's Rights' ". Putting men's rights in quotations can insinuate a lot of things. It can say that the writer believes that the men's right movement doesn't exist (or shouldn't) or it can say that the people she's referring to call themselves men's right activists but in her opinion they are not.
You can already see that even just the title catches your attention and elicits a response. That's a good job on Linze's part for getting us to read more of her article. The best tool she can use to get us to read more is fear. The title makes us think, "Oh no! A bunch of gross dudes are going to get together and reenact Cologne, Germany on New Years Eve!"
The first paragraph of the article is where we can see her switch from fear to sarcasm as a way to get you to chuckle and to take her side against these horrible men, so she says.
You go feminists!
I guess now is when I should tell you who these big bad women haters are.
Roosh Valizadeh is a self proclaimed pick up artist who has built much of his career on teaching other men how to convince women to sleep with them. On his webpage he explains how after visiting Romania and the Ukraine he gained a bit of fame which turned sour on him upon his return to the US. This isn't the first time I've heard of Roosh and I have seen some of the attacks against him, mainly for his written piece on what he thinks the world would be like if we legalized rape on private property. But more on that particular point later.
After a while, Roosh and some others started a blog called Return of Kings which quickly turned into a community. On their about page they clarify their mission:
"Return of Kings is a blog of heterosexual, masculine men. It's meant for a small but vocal collection of men in America today who believe men should be masculine and women should be feminine.
ROK aims to usher the return of the masculine man in a world where masculinity is being increasingly punished and shamed in favor of creating an androgynous and politically-correct society that allows women to assert superiority and control over men...This site intends to be a safe space on the web for those men who don't agree with the direction that Western culture is headed."
Without reading more (although I did, of course) we can come to some conclusions about what this community is comprised of. The community is neosexual men (or "neomasculine") who feel that, for whatever reason, they are the minority among men. They are looking to meet with like minded people to discuss their worldview. They even use the term, "safe space". A term which is widely used by those such as Linze Rice and others who would oppose these men.
So now that we know a little bit more about these men, let's continue on with the article with these new facts in mind.
The next few paragraphs consist of more sarcasm in order to dehumanize these people.
The underlined phrase clearly is there to make us think that this is pretty much a cult and these men blindly follow their leader without thought for their own well being or the well being of others.
After this comes a quote from his blog regarding her numerous statements that he is a proponent of rape. I am one for evidence over emotion so I wasn't so quick to convict the man. When I went to his blog to find the article in question, a big bold sentence caught my attention:
I highly doubt he put that in before Linze wrote her article. How could she have missed that big bold statement?
I will honestly say, I didn't read that blog post very closely. I honestly don't care what Roosh says about rape or how to stop it. But in it he proposes that, instead of making more laws to stop men from raping women, we should legalize rape on private property. He believes that then women will do more to protect themselves (rather than depending on others to protect them) knowing that there is a chance they could get raped.
Now, the whole idea is preposterous and he knows that, or he wouldn't have put that big bold sentence at the beginning. But thinking about problems from different angles is often how we come up with solutions. While I'm not advocating any of Roosh's suggestions, I am advocating for his right to make them without being labelled a rapist. He has made it clear that this was just an interesting jaunt into "what-if" land and nothing more. The man has written 8+ books on how to get women without raping them. I don't think he needs rape to be legal to convince women to sleep with him. But I digress...
I think the first two paragraphs of the next part of the article are actually pretty genuine. It's funny that we've had to go this far to find some genuine truth. I will say, however; putting "normal friendships" in quotations again makes it feel as though the writer does not agree with the statement. She's saying, "Roosh said this, not me! I don't think they have normal friendships!"
The last part is more important here. It makes you feel sympathy for women while feeling anger toward these men. After all, who could view poor defenseless women as "the enemy"?! And while I don't think viewing every single woman on the planet as an enemy is productive, I don't think that is exactly what these men are getting at and I think the point is going right over Linze's head.
The final part worth analyzing starts with a quote from Roosh which nearly made me laugh out loud. If anyone takes this seriously I think they need their eyes checked. "Shrieking mobs"? "Furious retribution"? I can't say with complete certainty that Roosh wasn't being serious in this quote (or that this quote wasn't taken out of context) but the way he words it tells me it's more for dramatic effect than anything else. He's trying to emotionally manipulate his people too.
My biggest problem with Linze's writing here is her downplaying of "doxxing" (or doxing).
Doxing is a common tactic of groups like Anonymous and LulzSec who will find personal information online and release it to the public, whatever the results. Usually, they use social media and a person's electronic footprint to drudge up personal information like addresses and phone numbers for both a person's home and workplace. Commonly, when someone who is looked upon negatively in the public opinion is doxed, their employer ends up being contacted (often ending in termination of employment) and they may receive a significant amount of death threats.
Here's an example of a response from one of my favorite YouTubers, Mundane Matt, when he got doxed:
Obviously, he was very proactive about it but often times it can be very scary and can cause some people to censor their own speech for fear of losing their jobs or being physically assaulted when their personal information gets out.
Anway, enough about doxing. I may do a post about that subject later.
That's about all of the article worth analyzing. The rest is information about where the meetup will be and a counter protest organized by a feminist group. Hopefully, this has cleared up how fear and sarcasm were used to elicit an emotional response in readers that may not exactly representative of the subject matter. Turns out, while Roosh and his group might be annoying, they probably weren't going to assault anyone. In the end, the event was cancelled and the group never even got together, so we'll never know what would have happened.
The power here lies in the fact that, if we fear this group, not only does the group itself have power over us, the people instilling that fear do as well. They know we'll come running back the next time they mention that pesky "Pro-Rape 'Men's Rights'" group.
Remember everyone, do your due diligence. Research something before you act on it. We only fear what we don't understand.
The next article in the series will be: TBA.
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