Some of us have seen the headlines: pro-rape, men’s-rights group cancels international meet-ups because the leader, Roosh V, “can no longer guarantee the safety and privacy of the men who want to attend.” The story behind these headlines is not click bait; there really is a pro-rape, men’s-rights group, they arranged international meet-ups for their members, and then they didn’t feel safe enough to actually follow through with them.
One good thing did come from the popularization of this group in the last few days: they attracted the attention of the famous group called Anonymous, who vowed to release information on the group in an effort to bring them down.
Perhaps an explanation is in order to fully understand the situation and the hate being thrown at the group. Roosh V, whose real name is Daryush Valizadeh, is the founder of a group called Return of the Kings and runs a blog that is “meant for a small but vocal collection of men in America today who believe men should be masculine and women should be feminine.” He states that the group has ideas and beliefs based on neomasculinity and has the reputation of being pro-rape primarily because of an essay he published, titled How to Stop Rape. In this essay, Roosh V states that women who are too trusting are to blame for being raped, and that we should legalize rape on private property so that women won’t allow themselves to get into these rape situations. Though he has since claimed that the essay was satirical and not meant to be taken seriously (he announced this an entire year after the essay was originally released and only after it received hate), there are several articles on the Return of Kings website that suggest the group truly is pro-rape. For example, one of the articles on the most popular page of the website has the title “‘Rape Culture’ Was Manufactured To Wage An Unjust War Against Men.” As if that weren’t enough, the opening line of this same article reads, “It’s been a fun and rape-filled season here at Return Of Kings.” It’s not often that you read “fun” and “rape-filled” in the same sentence, at least not from respectable men or women.
Return of Kings decided to coordinate some meet-ups for its forum members, but they started receiving condemnations and even went so far as to be banned from some countries. They began canceling their meet-ups because they “can no longer guarantee the safety and privacy of the men who want to attend,” which is pretty ironic, considering none of the women in the surrounding areas would have felt safe with their presence. In another “fun, rape-filled” moment of irony, the group began to arrange for their meet-ups to be conducted in hidden, private locations. I wonder if we should make violence against the group legal on private property, just as Roosh V suggested we do with rape?
That’s where Anonymous comes in. Anonymous, famous for its hacking of high-profile people or groups that have done/said disagreeable things, vowed to attack the group and began with the leader, Roosh V. Though the post has since been taken down, they posted the address of Roosh V’s/his family’s home (yes, he still lives with his mom), for all to see on Ghostbin. When looking through the Facebook post that announced this, the comments also show that Anonymous has also hacked the locations of their hidden meet-up locations and will release it shortly before the dates. They also state in the comments that Roosh V published a post warning the members to change their emails, should their database be hacked.
The intention of Anonymous is typically to scare these despicable people away from their spotlight and, hopefully, away from their ill-formed ideals and beliefs that could potentially cause harm to other humans. As we see Roosh V and Return of Kings retreating into the darkness with the cancelation of even more events and the changing of emails, it’s clear that the work Anonymous does is not in vain.
