You’ve probably seen some coverage of it in the last few days: a man named Daryush Valizadeh, more commonly known as Roosh V., has been advocating for international meet ups of his readers this weekend. Roosh V. founded the site called “Return of Kings” and purports to be the leader of a movement called “neomasculinity,” as well as an accomplished “pick-up artist.” But his arguably most controversial position–the legalization of rape on private property–drew international attention. In light of the widespread criticism, leaders and advocates rallied against the meet ups, and they have since been cancelled.
The meet ups were supposed to be on February 6, all over the world. According to the Return of Kings site, there were to be 165 meetings in 43 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. While Return of Kings originally publicly gave instructions for how to find the meet ups, after protests began, the organizers began to privatize the meet ups and required that prospective attendees prove that they were legitimately fans of the site (or one of Roosh V.’s other exploits) by one of three means:
- If you’ve left a non-hater comment on ROK or RooshV.com using your Disqus account before January 15.
- If you have an active account on RVF that is at least three months old.
- If you can provide a screenshot receipt of one of my books (Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, Paypal, etc) that was purchased before January 15.
Eventually, the meetings were cancelled altogether; according to a message posted by Roosh V. yesterday:
I can no longer guarantee the safety or privacy of the men who want to attend on February 6, especially since most of the meetups can not be made private in time. While I can’t stop men who want to continue meeting in private groups, there will be no official Return Of Kings meetups. The listing page has been scrubbed of all locations. I apologize to all the supporters who are let down by my decision.
Roosh V. actually claims that the article in which he argued that rape should be legal on private property was satire. It’s hard to tell whether or not that’s true, but it’s certainly not the only worrisome thing on his site.
Return of Kings, and the offensive and factually dubious viewpoints written on the site, have been floating around for a while now–every couple of months another one of its articles goes viral, sparking outrage among the general public. Greatest hits (according to the sites’s own list of the “Top 35 Most Important Articles on ROK”) include: “The Equality Movement is Allowing Women to Tyrannize Men,” “40 Pictures that Show the Decline of the American Woman” and “The Intellectual Inferiority of Women.” According to BBC:
The group’s community beliefs state that ‘a woman’s value significantly depends on her fertility and beauty’, whereas ‘a man’s value significantly depends on his resources, intellect and character’.
So, Return of King’s views shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone. But, the move from the screen to possible in-person activity prompted many to create petitions to urge authorities to stop the events from taking place.
While the meetings for this weekend are officially cancelled, the site got a nice publicity bump from the controversy; Shaun Davies and Milly Stilinovich of BBC News actually made a compelling argument that the entire thing was just a publicity stunt to gain more name recognition for Roosh V. and his site. So, I doubt that this is the last we’ll see of the man who has all but made hating women into a brand.