This week an international pro-rape and masculinity group referred to as “Return of The Kings” scheduled meetings to take place Saturday, Feb. 6. The meetings were hosted and coordinated through the group’s website by Roosh Valizadeh, the publisher of the Return of the Kings blog. These meetings were scheduled to take place in locations all across the world, including some familiar cities that many Michigan State students call their home like Lansing, Rochester and Ann Arbor.
By targeting Lansing and Ann Arbor, both heavily populated college towns, as meeting spots, many students on campus felt unsure about their safety and whether the group would bring with them violence. The meet-ups have allegedly been canceled, but the fear and discomfort associated with the group’s beliefs are still present.
“Even though the pro-rape group has canceled their meetings, I will still be staying indoors Saturday night for my own safety,” said Jill Kittlewell, MSU Sophmore.
By visiting the Return of The Kings site, it is easy to see that they have very radical beliefs about gender roles and male dominance in today’s society.
It states: “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.”
The blog claims to only serve as a safe space for this small amount of heterosexual masculine men who have these radical views.
If the blog’s views haven’t already pissed you off enough, check out some of their community beliefs.
Community belief number five: “A woman’s value significantly depends on her fertility and beauty. A man’s value significantly depends on his resources, intellect, and character.”
I wonder if these blogger’s mothers, wives and daughters would agree with that statement.
As a journalism major, it’s no surprise that I had to check out at least a few of the site’s blog posts, many of which had absolutely nothing to do with the blog’s beliefs. Instead, the posts seemed to be poorly written about mundane topics such as “How Your Life Changes After You Start Listening to Classical Music” or my personal fave, “4 Surprising Ways that Chimpanzees and Bonobos Show the Decline of Our Society.” The blog posts all show a common trend: blaming women and Western society for its transition into equality and as the sole reason for the decline of masculinity within politics, family life and social settings.
I am in total support of groups using websites as a medium to express their feelings, but when it comes to issues and extremist views like those of Return of The Kings, it can blur the line between what is ethical and what is truly moral. As a woman, the website makes my stomach upset. This small group of men discredits the protests, hunger strikes and arrests that the women before us endured so that we could be equal to men, just in terms of having voting rights. All of the other battles that women have to go through on a daily basis to be treated as equal human beings goes unnoticed. I am scared, and not because I fear this group, but because there are people in this world who believe in these ideas and cannot be convinced to think otherwise. That is by far the scariest thing of all.
Luckily, there is light at the end of the tunnel; there are many men around the world who believe and support the equality of all people no matter their gender, sexuality or gender identity. They are our fathers, our brothers, our grandpas, our friends, our coworkers and our significant others; they do exist, and they cannot and will not be persuaded to believe this extremist group’s views.That is what makes them the manliest of all.
Editor’s Note: While you may choose to view the Return of The Kings site on your own time, Her Campus-MSU is refraining from providing a link to its page – in hopes of preventing further publicization and sensationalization of its hateful content and message.