Return Of Kings' Daryush Valizadeh Says He's Writing Satire; Here's Why That's A Lie

Trigger warning: This article discusses rape and violence against women.

Be advised, on account of the language used by Daryush Valizadeh in the below links, we highly recommend parental guidance for anyone under the age of 18.

As most of you are probably (and should be) aware, the “web’s most famous misogynist”, Daryush Valizadeh, cancelled more than 150 planned international meet-ups for his unabashedly misogynistic followers earlier this month.

Prospective Australian attendees definitely dodged a bullet due to the furore it caused, with local feminist and socialist groups planning protests against the group’s vile beliefs.

Posted to his website and his blog, Return of Kings, Valizadeh holds innumerable 19th century attitudes, believing that women are intellectually inferior and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to vote, have jobs, or to study.

Instead, he believes they should dedicate their lives to being submissive to men, who must control every aspect of their behaviour and decisions.

To Valizadeh’s followers, a woman who cuts her hair is mentally ill. Valizadeh also insists women be monogamous, while simultaneously encouraging men to have multiple sexual partners, and to treat women like “disposable razors” and “oil wells”; once they dry up, move on to the next one. This isn’t even the worst of it. I could go on, but I’ll restrain myself.

Published last year, his most outrageous article offers an indefensible suggestion to reduce the occurrence of rape: legalise it on private property. This piece wasn’t nearly as scandalous upon publication as it became when he planned last month’s international get-togethers, with the media latching on to the ‘legalise rape’ identifier in denouncing the meetups and Valizadeh himself. And rightfully so, because even though the meetups weren’t ‘legal rape rallies’ as advertised on social media, Valizadeh and his article was indeed advocating for rape to be partially legalised.

Let’s get something straight. Regardless of how many times Valizadeh has claimed since that “it was satire”, it isn’t. Sure, it has satirical elements, but on the whole Valizadeh is speaking – unnervingly – in earnest.

He begins the piece in a sarcastic tone, making satirical criticisms about how the writers of “Salon, Buzzfeed, and Huffington Post” are “Pulitzer Prize winners”, and raises in a mock-surprised way his perceived duplicity regarding the law and alcohol.

He comments on the idea that if a woman drink-drives and kills someone, it’s her fault for driving the car, and yet if she is raped while inebriated, it’s the rapist’s fault, stating that he “couldn’t find an explanation for this inconsistency”. He goes on to make fun of what he believes to be an absurd practice: teaching men not to rape:

Okay, sure, this is satirical, even though he is inherently incorrect and blatantly misses the point. However, in the next few paragraphs, he begins speaking seriously and seemingly from experience. He comments on how children know “from an early age that rape [is] bad”, and that he wasn’t taught those rules – it was simply innate. He spouts off about his previously elucidated views about how women who “numb themselves with alcohol” are opening themselves up to being raped.

Valizadeh offers a solution to this – legalising rape on private property – as a way to make women more careful and protective of their bodies. In demonstrating how the threat of rape will stop women entering situations where rape is possible in a serious way, this defies the definition of satire. If anything, this article advocates victim blaming, and serves to highlight the hypocrisy and double standards in Valizadeh’s most reprehensible of beliefs.

And so his article is not satire, no matter how often Valizadeh pleads that it is. His vitriolic rhetoric is becoming so increasingly outlandish, it is getting harder to work out if and when he’s not actually being serious.

Photo: YouTube.

Kyle Uglow-Turpin is one of Student Edge’s student contributors. Learn more about the contributors program.