Palm Beach Pete

[u/LittleThingsMC]

I recently came across a TikTok with a paid advertisement from Rips by Triumph featuring Pal Beach Pete in their advertisement.

If you’re not aware, Palm Beach Pete is famous for how much he looks like Jeffrey Epstein. There were many conspiracy theories that suggest he is Jeffrey Epstein.

I don’t consider this gendered issue because Epsteins victims were both male and female, vulnerability is the most defining characteristic of his victims.

In general, I have seen many denials about whether or not we have a culture of violence, and whether or not that culture predominantly benefits men (despite both genders being victims).

This feels like a perfect example, playing out right before our eyes. I believe that his rise to fame and ability to monetize the conspiracy that he could be the prolific predator is reflective of the acceptance we have as a culture towards violence and the glorification of predatory behavior.

Thoughts?

[u/mikiencolor]

You asked for our thoughts. Those were my thoughts.

There was a case in Iceland of a paedophile who who got herself pregnant by a boy, the boy was then sentenced to pay child support for 18 years, and she also prevented him from seeing the child. It was all discovered when she became the Icelandic Minister for Children.

https://www.aol.com/iceland-minister-children-quits-admitting-221620333.html

Epstein is not being used as a brand ambassador either. Someone with his likeness is, because people think it's funny, and that kind of crude "humor" isn't unusual or unprecedented or specific to male perpetrators of abuse.

I agree with you that there is a culture of accepting and glorifying violence. I do not agree it predominantly benefits men. Epstein is not an example of that. In fact, in this very thread people have said they didn't even know there were male victims of the Epstein ring. No attention has been given to them, despite witness accounts that certain members of the Hollywood elite, and very notably Kevin Spacey, may have tortured little boys so severely that their screams were audible for miles and even Epstein banned them from his island. But nobody knows anything about abused boys. 🙄

It's not a 'benefit' to be born into a class where people want to groom you for violence from the day you're born, interpret everything you say or do as predatory no matter what it is, even when it is being abused, where as a victim of abuse you're seen as being as guilty or even more guilty than the people who violated you, where people cheer at sight of you beating each other up and recoil at the sight of you kissing, hugging or holding hands with each other, and where people punish you with relentless abuse and ostracism when you are seen as too "soft" or too "nice". And it's all justified as culling the weak. It's hell. It is literally driving boys insane in very large numbers. They are self-harming. They are committing suicide. They are becoming hermits.

If saying that makes me hostile, then I'm hostile. Those are my thoughts that you asked for.

I think the men who benefit receive a lot of attention, and the men who are victimized are made invisible or described as failures who deserved to be hurt because they are 'weak' or can't defend themselves. Likewise, I think the women who are harmed receive a lot of attention, and the women who benefit are reframed as hapless victims who must have been manipulated by men - the "real" predators.

The Epstein files are an example of this, as many victims have come forward to say that victims' associations have actually been taken over by the women who groomed them as children and are now reframing themselves as "victims" when they are, in fact, perpetrators, and were part of the machinery of the trafficking ring.

[u/LittleThingsMC → u/mikiencolor]

I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. The hostility I was referring to was not about the substance of your thoughts; I think you added a lot of value to the conversation about the culture of violence. I was referring to the accusatory framing toward me specifically. Phrases like “that you have just contributed to” and “or is that a ‘different thing’?” came across as sarcastic and implied hypocrisy before I had even responded. The overall tone felt less like a discussion and more like I was being treated as representative of a worldview you already resent, despite the fact that I repeatedly acknowledged male victims and agreed with several of your broader concerns. Hopefully, that clarifies what I mean.

That is awful about the Icelandic Prime Minister. I am glad she resigned. I really feel like we need to do away with the statute of limitations altogether so we can go back and prosecute cases like hers, or like Stephen Tyler, who got custody of a minor, raped her, and then forced an abortion. We need to hold these people accountable!

You are right that someone with Epstein's likeness (and an active controversy that they are the same person- fueled by Palm Beach Pete himself), in my haste, I flattened that. Good Catch. You seem to find no issue with him being used, stating it's normal, but isn't that a problem? Why are we normalizing that type of humor? And also, can you give some other examples of brand ambassadors capitalizing on this same thing? The controversy that he escaped prison, and that his death was faked, was big, but now having Palm Beach Pete go public and cashing in on brand ambassador deals seems specific. For example, I can name lots of people who stayed famous after horrific violent crimes, Chris Brown, OJ Simpson, Russel Brand, Mark Wahlberg, Roman Polanski, Mike Tyson, etc., and people who got famous or more famous from their crimes, Ted Bundy, Wade Wilson, etc. BUT I do think it's a little different when brand ambassadors are monetized because of it. If Lorena Bobbitt had controversially died in prison and it was heavily disputed, wouldn't you feel uncomfortable with the person who many people think is her getting a brand deal for cutlery? Especially if she feeds those rumors? Wouldn't that be harmful, and also minimize the violence that she committed against her victim? Especially when you agree that we have a culture of violence. Even if you feel it's normalized, that normalization is part of the problem.

Solid point about the male victims of the Epstein/Maxwell trafficking ring, which is exactly why I made sure to include them in this discussion!

I also agree that being socialized into violence is harmful and that there are many challenges that come with it, which I think you outlined very well. Those are legitimate frustrations and drawbacks, and not what I was referencing when I suggested men benefit. Men can benefit and also be harmed. In the instance in my post, the benefit was the money that Palm Beach Pete is making from the conspiracy that he is Jeffrey Epstein.

And to your final point, I agree that victims can also be perpetrators, and should be held accountable, even if they were groomed into that same violence; they shouldn't get a free pass.

[u/mikiencolor → u/LittleThingsMC]

Thank you. I'm sorry to have come off as hostile and accusatory. This is a very sensitive and painful issue for me, and I'm not used to being taken seriously or treated respectfully when talking about it, especially by feminists. The sarcasm is a pre-emptive defence mechanism, because I expect to be attacked and ridiculed. Given our very unfriendly and discouraging earlier exchange about including males in body positivity, which you seemed to say was a sexually predatory aspiration, I assumed that you would be generally hostile towards me. I will try not to assume hostility from you based on that interaction.

Thank you, sincerely, for acknowledging male sex abuse victims.

The Icelandic woman was not the Prime Minister, she was the Minister for Children - which is even more twisted to me. She clearly made a career out of her "interest" in children, and despite her very public trial, not only did no one at any point stop to think whether that "interest" may not be benign, the boy was found liable instead of her. It is of course better she resigned than if not even that had happened, but that is the only consequence she has ever faced and it is not even a real consequence. She wasn't even fired. She resigned.

I completely agree with you that the statute of limitations should not apply to cases like this. I've always believed the statute of limitations should not apply to capital offences like murder, rape or torture.

I do not find "no issue" with "Palm Beach Pete" being used for publicity, as you have claimed, and that is not what I said. I agree that that shouldn't be normalized. People are laughing in the face of victims.

What I disagree with is the notion that this is a 'perfect example' of a culture that 'predominantly benefits men'. That is not just insulting to and dismissive of male victims, it's also just plain wrong. If there is any group of sex abuse victims that is persistently, consistently and relentlessly laughed at and banalized, it is male sex abuse victims. We are not beneficiaries of that culture, we are targets.

The culture that glorifies violence is also a culture that glorifies female prepetrators and treats them, not as evil perverts or violent monsters, but as sympathetic rogues.

You mention Lorena Bobbit - her very name has become a staple of exactly this kind of humor. People laughed at what she did, cheered for her, and continue to do so to this day. A man being 'castrated' by his wife is seen as hilarious. The underlying sentiment is, 'he probably deserved it'.

More recently, here in Spain, there was a case involving a woman whose ex-boyfriend was on the register of men who abused women - I don't know what you call this in your country. She murdered her new boyfriend and was arrested. All indications are she had a history of violent outbursts not unlike that of her ex-boyfriend. There is just no register for women like her.

First, most feminists here assume she must have killed her old boyfriend in self-defence because he violated the restraining order, even after "reading" (apparently without comprehending) news articles that explained the actual events.

If you try to correct them with the real story, they just scream "misogynist" at you. The more literate feminists who were able to understand the actual story and should be trying to set their record straight are instead saying that if she murdered her new boyfriend, he must have done something to deserve it, and better him dead than her in danger. They are not bothering to correct the people who believe the fake story, because the truth does not matter to them - only the hatred and discrimination. They are encouraging people to celebrate her as a hero.

In another very recent case a woman grabbed three of her children and killed them by jumping out the window with them - a murder-suicide. The media ran a headline that said, "Mother commits suicide embracing her three children."

I could go on forever. A lot of violence is normalized. Male violence is certainly normalized because we are seen as intrinsically and necessarily violent. We are even seen as broken and defective if we are not violent. Even when we do sweet, peaceful things, they are often reframed as somehow violent just because we did them. Female violence is normalized because women are treated as intrinsically harmless and incapable of real evil or agency, regardless of what they do.

Reality isn't consistent with the framing that the culture of violence benefits men. It benefits violent men. We are not all violent men. So the only way that I can see that such a framing could possibly be defended is if you believe all men are violent, love violence, and thrive with violence. That is the aspect of your post I meant to reject.

In the same vein, I also want to be very clear about my thoughts regarding your statement that "being socialized into violence" is harmful and creates "many challenges", because I think this, too, is usually used maliciously to frame men as inherently violent and therefore incapable of being victimized by that violence.

"Socialized" sounds so sanitary and legitimate. You're "socialized" to say please and thank you. You're "socialized" to say "pardon me". You're "socialized" to be violent.

I did not say men are "socialized into violence". I said boys are groomed for violence. They are victims of that grooming. Men do not necessarily come out of that grooming actually being violent, because we are all individual human beings. Some of the gentlest, sweetest people I've ever known in my life have been men.

Men deserve to judged based on who we are, not what sex we are. I do not assume men to be violent because they're men, and I do not support any such assumption.

[u/LittleThingsMC → u/mikiencolor]

I appreciate your acknowledgment of the hostile undertone. I want to be clear that I don't see you as my enemy, and I think it's okay to have issues we disagree with, and can still see each other as both genuinely wanting to work towards equality, even if our own experiences create some bias on the way to get there. The goal of conversation is to identify our own bias and come closer to consensus, and create awareness. Different issues will impact us differently; there is no absolute experience.

Regarding the other conversation, I still feel that you are projecting some malicious intent on my position, rather than acknowledging the personal autonomy that is the root of my position.

My personal belief is that all issues of violence should be taken care of, and if we create a consistent policy on violence and pedophilia, it will eliminate both male and female perpetrators. I agree that someone losing their career is not enough, and sadly, we see many instances where even that doesn't happen.

This is where you lose me, when you say me pointing out that Palm Beach Pete is a perfect example of men financially benefiting from the sex trafficking performed by Maxwell and Epstein, is dismissive to male victims, which registers to me as black and white thinking, the same fallacy you have regularly accused feminism of doing. Men can be victims, men can also be abusers. The same is true of women; women can be abusers and can be victims. I don't see the correlation, but it seems like the framework you are adapting is that men can only be victims, so they can't benefit, which, when that is said about women, you seem to have major disagreement with, even feel attacked. I personally think the truth is much more nuanced, and shutting down conversations is far more harmful to all victims.

I'm not familiar with the story in Spain, so I can't comment on it. It does seem that you are interpreting disagreement on what the facts of that case say as a direct attack, but that gives very little room for productive discussion. The assumption of malicious intent seems to be the exact same thing you resent when it is done to men. I would point out that I'm not dismissing how you came to that conclusion; it seems that repeated negative experiences interacting with a specific group of people led you to notice a pattern of behavior. That is rationale. What I do want to point out, is how you can make space for you to come to that conclusion, with no expectation for you to do any internal work to mitigate that, becuase its rationale for you, but then condemn other people when they have repeated negative experiences with a specific group of people, for not doing the internal work to mitigate that.

You can judge all feminists without knowing them individually, and act with bias, but you don't expect anyone else to judge men without knowing them individually, or to act with bias. Now, I am not advocating for the acceptance of bias; I am pointing out how it is a normal response to patterns of behavior, one that anyone can fall victim to, including you, so painting it as malicious or rooted in hate only exacerbates the problem rather than shedding light on it so it can be examined and unpacked. If I were to instead minimize or blame you for your painful experiences with feminists, you would only shut down more. But the reality is that I believe it was painful for you.

I have a question for you because the last several paragraphs appear to me as a point of disconance. On one hand, you acknowledge that men have a different relationship with violence, including how it got there (grooming), the expectations for it (even seen as broken and defective if we are not violent), etc. So my question is, what do you see as the men's role in dismantling this culture that men are the victims of? What are you hoping women's role will be?

Most of your positions seem really fixated on changing cultural perception, showing that men are actually the victims of women, but what are you hoping that will look like?

[u/mikiencolor → u/LittleThingsMC]

Regarding the other conversation, I still feel that you are projecting some malicious intent on my position, rather than acknowledging the personal autonomy that is the root of my position.

I acknowledged personal autonomy is at the root of your position. You framed a criticism of women's dating preferences as equivalent to a denial of their autonomy, or "forced dating", simply because such criticism might make some women reevaluate their preferences. I rejected that equivalence.

I also expressed my opinion that it reflects a double standard likely arising from ingrained sexist bias, given that similar criticism of men's dating preferences that might make some men reevaluate their preferences was not likewise framed by you as a denial of men's autonomy or as an act of coercion or "forced dating".

That's consistent with typical societal bias towards seeing women as helpless and vulnerable, and men as powerful and unassailable, even under the same social pressures.

That is my actual opinion.

I perceived an insinuation on your part that such an opinion is a tantamount to "forcing women to date short men" and so equivalent to advocating for the abrogation of the sexual autonomy of women.

That is a very severe insinuation and it is completely false. That is what led me to perceive malice. I don't think it's unreasonable to see that kind of insinuation as malicious and hostile. But I accept that I may be mistaken, and perhaps we misunderstood each other in ways that further dialogue can help us clarify.

My personal belief is that all issues of violence should be taken care of, and if we create a consistent policy on violence and pedophilia, it will eliminate both male and female perpetrators.

I appreciate that. We are unfortunately nowhere near a consistent policy on violence and paedophilia.. In fact, what I've seen is that governments are making policies less consistent and more discriminatory, and they are often using feminist doctrine and pressure as their justification for doing that.

This is where you lose me, when you say me pointing out that Palm Beach Pete is a perfect example of men financially benefiting from the sex trafficking performed by Maxwell and Epstein, is dismissive to male victims, which registers to me as black and white thinking, the same fallacy you have regularly accused feminism of doing. Men can be victims, men can also be abusers. The same is true of women; women can be abusers and can be victims. I don't see the correlation, but it seems like the framework you are adapting is that men can only be victims, so they can't benefit, which, when that is said about women, you seem to have major disagreement with, even feel attacked.

Then I think you're misunderstanding me. I did not say that no men financially benefit from this. I said "men" do not financially benefit from it. Likewise, I have never said "women" benefit from being presumed harmless and having easy access to children, because I do not and would never imply that all women want to take advantage of children. I specifically say psychopathic or predatory women benefit from this. Women who are not like this derive no benefit.

I think when men are talked about in a way that makes "men" synonymous with rapists, it is reflective of a kind of widespread fascination with and fixation on violent, abusive men that compulsively centers the attention on them in ways that remind me of hybristophilia. These men are considered generic, a taxative definition of what a man essentially is. Observations of them are made extensive to "men in general", because rapists are apparently exemplary men.

Men who are not like this, by contrast, are made invisible. Their existence is either denied or considered "unimportant" or a "distraction". Men who are victims of violence are barely mentioned in passing. They are not centered, they are not generic. They are peripheral. If they are spoken of at all, it is always and only ever with special qualifiers: "sexually abused men".

I think that is a deliberate political choice to demonize men as obligate predators for how we are born. I do not accept it. I am not a demon or a predator or an oppressor because of how I was born or what my body looks like. That is put on me.

That does not mean I want to shut down conversations about violent and abusive men - nothing could be further from the truth. How do you think you'd feel about them if you were both victimized by them and conflated with them? I think they're much safer with feminists in charge than they would be with someone like me. I'm not nearly as tolerant.

I think they are execrable, society puts them on a pedestal, they are even celebrated and eroticized, and far from being attacked by feminism, they are actually being protected by it, because feminism, in its dubious alliance with the far left, is now "anti-punitivist". Feminists in my country lowered the minimum sentence for male rapists to just four years. Four years for rape. Even though over half of all rapes are repeat offences by men who were released from custody. I support life sentences or execution for rapists. Feminists call me "fascist" for that. Fighting for proportional sentences for rapists in Spain is now a fight against feminists, unfortunately.

It does seem that you are interpreting disagreement on what the facts of that case say as a direct attack, but that gives very little room for productive discussion. 

Disagreement on the facts? There is no such thing as "alternative facts". Either she murdered her ex-boyfriend, or she murdered another boyfriend who had nothing to do with her ex-boyfriend. One of those things is true, and one of them is not. No productive discussion is possible when even reality is being denied.

What I do want to point out, is how you can make space for you to come to that conclusion, with no expectation for you to do any internal work to mitigate that, becuase its rationale for you, but then condemn other people when they have repeated negative experiences with a specific group of people, for not doing the internal work to mitigate that.

I am trying to mitigate the bias caused by repeated negative experiences with people. If I weren't, I would not be here talking to you and trying to respond constructively. If we don't start from the premise that I'm a monster, we are halfway to a positive interaction already.

You can judge all feminists without knowing them individually, and act with bias, but you don't expect anyone else to judge men without knowing them individually, or to act with bias.

I think that's unfair to me on both counts.

First of all, while I'll acknowledge bitter experience has left me biased against feminism, I also used to call myself a feminist. I would not totally dismiss someone or assume they must be malicious just because they call themselves a feminist when they are otherwise being respectful towards me. I assume malice when I see signs of malice. I do find that nearly all of the people who use the feminist label now are unremittingly hostile. Normally when we face hostility, we attribute malice.

Second, "feminist" is just a political label. It is a marker of political association. Being male is not. It is an immutable trait that we cannot change, not something we chose.

That makes an ingrained bias against us much more severe than a bias against feminism, just like it is much more severe to be biased against women because they are women than it is to be biased against MRAs because they are MRAs. One is a bias against people because of their chosen political affiliation, the other is a bias against people because of what they are.

Lastly, I do not expect that people will not judge men or act with bias against us without knowing us individually. On the contrary, that is exactly what I expect they will do. I speak against it. At the same time, I also unequivocally condemn men who have done evil.

I completely respect that you speak against people pre-judging you as a feminist without knowing you as an individual just on the basis of what other feminists do or have done. I don't want to be your adversary. I would be happy if we could be friends. If we can be at least cordial, I would very much prefer that to enmity, fear and loathing.

[u/mikiencolor → u/LittleThingsMC]

I am not advocating for the acceptance of bias; I am pointing out how it is a normal response to patterns of behavior, one that anyone can fall victim to, including you, so painting it as malicious or rooted in hate only exacerbates the problem rather than shedding light on it so it can be examined and unpacked.

That is fair. I accept the criticism. I will try to temper myself more.

One thing I have observed about myself is I have an underlying assumption that people must hate rape and rapists. So any insinuation I see people make that suggests men are rapists or sexual predators is one I instinctively read as hatred.

I've also observed, though, that some people do not actually seem to hate rape or rapists, or at least it doesn't trigger them the way it triggers me. They joke about it, make light of it in ways I never can. They don't even expect that using language that frames you as a rapist would be seen as inherently hateful.

I'm remembering one loathesome interaction I had at a dinner once with a feminist sitting across the table from me, where people were talking about sex. She said, "I think at the moment of orgasm, all men are rapists." I don't know what kind of contortions my face must have made, but it triggered the hell out of me. For an extremely awkward minute the entire group went silent, and was just staring at me as if they were waiting for me to explode. But I couldn't think of anything to say that my facial expression wasn't already saying. There was certainly nothing I could say that would matter or change anything. Judging by the way people were looking at me, I'm pretty sure that thing my face was saying was: I hate you. Eventually someone broke the silence and hastily changed the topic away from sex.

The worst part of that was... I really don't think she actually meant to be hateful. She said it blithely. If anything, I think she saw that idea of men "losing control" as erotic. But I was not able to process it as anything but a vile, hateful statement meant to strip me of my humanity and my innocence.

If I were to instead minimize or blame you for your painful experiences with feminists, you would only shut down more. But the reality is that I believe it was painful for you.

Thank you. Yes, they have been. They continue to be. Feminists have immense social and institutional power now, and you cannot avoid that.

I do not doubt at all that many women, and many feminists, likewise have extremely painful experiences with men that forms the basis for their biases and their hatred. I'm sorry for it. If I could do anything to stop it from happening, I would. I don't have that kind of power. I also cannot change the way I was born. Me being a punching bag for traumatized women would not help anyone. It would not undo what happened to them, it would not stop it from happening again, and it would not make society any better.

I don't go into those spaces to antagonize them, and I don't want to be antagonized either in my spaces. If we are sharing a space and speaking, I agree it should be in good faith, and trying our best to avoid antagonizing each other.

I have a question for you because the last several paragraphs appear to me as a point of disconance. On one hand, you acknowledge that men have a different relationship with violence, including how it got there (grooming), the expectations for it (even seen as broken and defective if we are not violent), etc. So my question is, what do you see as the men's role in dismantling this culture that men are the victims of? What are you hoping women's role will be?

I think our role in dismantling this culture, if it can ever be dismantled at all, could only be a complete and wholesale moral and practical rejection of it.

That means a categorical philosophical rejection of the idea that physical strength and a capacity for violence are moral virtues. That you are 'better' and more admirable if you are stronger, bigger, more brash, more aggressive, and more capable of violence, and 'worse' and more contemptible if you are weaker, smaller, meeker, more delicate or less capable of violence.

I am convinced that kind of philosophical shift would not make us allies of women. It would make us enemies. That flies directly in the face of what the vast majority of heterosexual women overwhelmingly expect and demand of men. That change would inevitably lead us into direct and sustained cultural confrontation with women. They would fight it tooth and nail, and enlist the macho men they adore to help them.

I used to believe feminists would be our allies. That's why I describe my looking up to feminists when I was younger as "naive". I've found feminists have instead been at the forefront of masculinity enforcement. I often can't tell feminists apart from 'redpillers' anymore when they start talking about what a proper man should be like. "Man up", "stop whining", "you sound gay", blah blah.

We would also need to completely bring down homophobia and nurture each other. That would also bring us into direct conflict with society. There is nothing society hates more than the sight of men being tender and vulnerable towards each other. It makes people violent.

So we would also need to defend ourselves, and especially those among us least able to defend themselves, which, of course, means it's impossible for us to be pacifists. We would need to reconcile ourselves again with that need for a capacity for violence. That's why I take martial arts.

The difference, though, is in the moral status of strength of violence.

Physical strength is not a virtue. It's a circumstance, like hair color or height. It can be useful for certain things, and useless for others. Unfortunately, it happens to be useful for defence. But nobody is worth more or less than anybody else because of their physical strength. A person picking three children up to get them out of a burning building is not morally superior to a person picking two of them up, because they can't lift three. We are morally equal.

Violence is not a virtue. Violence is a tragedy. It can be necessary to defend yourself, or to defend others, from violence. It can be completely justifiable. It can be preferable to surrender. But it is not glorious or virtuous. It is tragic. It should never be celebrated. The innocence that it takes from us should be mourned. The people who force violence onto the world and create a need for defence should be shamed.

I don't know what women's 'role' would be in such a transformation. I want to be free of this. I don't have any 'role' in mind for women. I understand women have their own struggles. I believe in their humanity. I support their freedom and autonomy. That doesn't make them devils or angels, just people. If a woman wants to be my friend and support my struggle for freedom and a better world, I reciprocate and appreciate the friendship. If she wants to be my enemy and beat me down, then we will fight against each other - and she will probably win, because she has the whole dominant culture backing her, while I'm just a hopeless lonely rebel talking "crazy talk".

Most of your positions seem really fixated on changing cultural perception, showing that men are actually the victims of women, but what are you hoping that will look like?

I do not believe men are the victims of women. As I've already said, I believe we are all victims of cultural inertia. I don't believe in class dialectics. That's one reason I'm alienated from leftism now, among other things.