When people die, it is a time for mourning and coming together of communities so that we may cherish the memories of those we have lost and honour their time with us. You would think that after a bloody tragedy that resulted in the deaths of innocent people, the last thing people would do is look for ways to twist it to advance their own agenda and ideology. At the very least, let the bodies grow cold so that the time for mourning can happen. But misplaced idealism is misplaced, as is demonstrated with James Marshall Crotty’s piece for the Huffington Post entitled, “In San Bernardino Shooting, Patriarchy Pulled the Trigger”. You read that right. It wasn’t religious extremism or easy access to firearms that allowed this shooting to occur. It was good, old-fashioned, home-grown oppression of women that made it happen.

The opening paragraph in Mr. Crotty’s piece takes a very arrogant tone, with Mr. Crotty…I guess, mansplaining…what really caused the shooting in the first place. According to Mohammad Abuershaid, the associate attorney for the relatives of the two shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, “[Farook] was working for the city, had a full-time job…getting his masters…living the American Dream.” At this time, the motive for why the shooting happened isn’t known or very clear. Some say it was terrorism, others say it was because guns are too easily accessible in the United States. That’s not it, according to Mr. Crotty. It happened because Farook’s mother, Rafia, who lived with the couple while they were married, was too shit-scared to look into the garage. That’s relevant because the garage was designated as Farook’s man cave and Rafia wasn’t allowed in due to Pakistani patriarchal culture which, according to Mr. Crotty, forbids women from doing anything; as in, anything. As a result, the mother is complicit in her son’s behaviour because of her lack of curiosity. I mean it’s not as if she maybe just didn’t care or maybe she didn’t notice. Nope, it’s not because she’s human and prone to mistakes like the rest of us. I’d agree that it’s unlikely that she would never venture into the garage and see what was going on in there, but that doesn’t make it impossible.

Mr. Crotty conveniently cites an article from The Daily Mail which explains that it was, in fact, Tashfeen who might have radicalized Farook and brought him to commit this horrific act. Here’s the quote in question.

Read that carefully gents; “…Malik, 29, had been the first to open fire…while Farook, 28, appeared to ‘hesitate’. Yet somehow, this is still the fault of the patriarchy. It’s not like Tashfeen was her own person, making her own decisions, in control of her faculties. We can’t let that pesky thing known as free will get in the way of a victim narrative. I am not going to go out on a limb and assume anything definitive about Farook’s reasons for going on this rampage. I only want to discuss possible motivations within a MGTOW context.

In that same Daily Mail article, the following is written,

Now that’s definitely something you don’t hear every day when it comes to East Asian marriages. After all, the narrative we’re fed is that such relationships are always one-sided with the man either beating his wife or throwing acid on her face because she dared to look left when he told her to look right. I’m not suggesting these actions do not happen. Certainly they do and they’re well-documented, but to hear a feminist describe it, you would think that that’s all that happens. But at the end of the day, oppressive culture or not, Farook was a man just like any of us in that he was still subject to the way men respond to women they love.

Malik entered the country on a fiancée visa. For those of you who don’t know what that is, in the U.S., the K-1 visa program allows foreign nationals to enter the country and requires them to be married to a U.S. citizen 90 days after receiving the visa. There is some suspicion amongst people who are against immigration that the system for obtaining the visa is flawed and easily exploited by would-be terrorists. However, more logical thinkers reason that the visa process is also so strict that people who use it for nefarious purposes are deterred to begin with and that countries from which the majority of these K-1 applications come from are not designated as terror-prone in the SECURE Act. In sum, it’s a waste of time for most terrorists.

A woman coming into a country for the purpose of marriage only to exploit the man’s resources is nothing new. It’s been documented on several occasions. It’s an easy way to start a new life for herself and is in line with women’s own tendency towards hypergamy. Both hyperagency and hypoagency are at work here because Mr. Crotty simultaneously blames Farook for what happened yet denies Malik’s own involvement because she’s a victim of a patriarchal culture. Her influencing Farook’s actions does not come as a surprise when you consider that very same patriarchal (read: traditionalist) culture. Being a woman, Malik of course possesses the Golden Uterus. I can tell you from personal experience in interacting with Pakistani friends that family and tradition are of high importance in that culture. Men are raised to worship the idea of traditionalism to the point where they move back home even after marriage or they live close to home for the sake of their parents. With that said, it’s possible that Farook did what he did out of love (read: coercion) because he wanted a future with this woman even though part of him knew this wasn’t going to end well. His co-workers also noticed a change in his behaviour after he was married to Malik. From the article,

Imagine someone walking up to him in the office and saying something to the effect of,

“Hey Farook, is everything OK? You’ve been acting differently since you came back from Saudi.”

“Differently how?”

“Well, just, you seem more distant. You’re not as social as you used to be.”

“It’s my wife. I’m working longer hours. She isn’t working yet because of her visa situation.”

“That’s all?”

“That and I’ve been reading the Quran a lot more. She got me into it. She loves it. We read it nightly with each other.”

“I see. And, the new beard? I never figured you for the lumberjack type.”

“Oh, my wife wanted it. Says it’s in the Quran so, yeah.”

“Wife’s really leaving her mark on you, huh?”

“What can I say? I love her.”

“Yeah…look dude, I’m not saying you’re becoming a terrorist, but I’m a little freaked out.”

Talk about awkward. In such a conversation, the warning signs would be very obvious to a keen person. With a new wife has come new behaviours, new lifestyles, and to top it all off, these are all tied to a religion that has already shown itself to be responsible for violence and chaos, mass anti-violence by moderate Muslims be damned. It doesn’t take much to connect the dots. Maybe his family didn’t care because, as will be noted later on, they grew up in an environment where such behaviour was normal but to a rational, level-headed person living in the developed world, the red flags would start popping up.

Mr. Crotty highlights that Farook came from a family with known ties to radical Muslim groups. If that’s true, then he already had the seeds planted for terrorist activity within him. If you’re second guessing yourself before pulling the trigger, perhaps you might still have some amount of humanity left in you but it wouldn’t be enough to overcome teachings given to you as a child and repeated until you reached adulthood. The problem, again, wouldn’t be patriarchy, Mr. Crotty, it would be the religion and the culture. I draw that distinction because the two are different yet are often conflated. You don’t need to live in a patriarchal society to be influenced by religious violence. When the recent attacks on the Planned Parenthood clinics occurred, the Christians responsible weren’t living in a patriarchy given how gynocentric the U.S. is. The culture however still isn’t fully accepting of abortions and when infused with religious extremism, that’s what happens. All it takes for religious violence to occur is a lack of respect for human life and a lack of a conscience.

Whatever influence came from his wife or his culture, Mr. Farook was still making his choices in standing by her side. Remember that he was stocking weapons in his garage with his wife out of choice. As far as I can tell, no one was holding a gun to his head and, unless Professor Xavier suddenly became real, he wasn’t under the influence of mind control. He made his choice because he believed in traditionalism and he believed in his religion. Everyone and their dog has already acknowledged that religion is a problem that needs to be dealt with; some more extremely than others. But why are ignoring the other part of the problem?

The first reason is obvious. No one is going to call out Pakistani culture for being horribly backwards at the mainstream level because they would be branded a racist. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time it has happened. The second reason is that this discussion cannot be framed in a manner that paints Farook as the victim because the mainstream media would never see it that way. The Muslim man; the victim? When it’s his poor wife who has to wear a hijab or niqab or burqa, when she’s stuck at home not being able to do what she wants because the man and his beard are violently oppressing her? No, they can’t do that it goes against the narrative that Islam is a religion that oppresses women only. The only subject left to discuss then is the issue of firearms and the supposed lack of regulation. It derails the real issue because we can’t ever see the man as a potential victim. Never mind that men in Pakistan could certainly benefit from a healthy dose of MGTOW and break away from this backwards mindset and save their lives in the process. Maybe in time it will happen. I say this because the men’s movement does have some boots on the ground in India, with men demanding the family court system be retooled. I know that India is not Pakistan but given that they are neighbouring countries with similar cultural values, the men’s movement could spill over into Pakistan and from there, progress could happen.

MGTOW saves lives, gentlemen. Maybe it could’ve saved Mr. Farook from committing this barbaric act of mass murder at his wife’s side. Then again, atheism could’ve saved them both. So the moral here is, fuck religion, fuck traditionalism, fuck any kind of standard you’ve been conditioned to believe in, and go your own way.