A Republican State Senator Has Been Outed as the Creator of a Misogynistic Subreddit

Misogyny is alive and thriving on Reddit's notorious "Red Pill" pickup artist board. Named after The Matrix's symbolic offering between a red pill symbolizing the bitter truth and a blue pill symbolizing blissful ignorance, the forum is the digital embodiment of the sentiment that masculinity is under attack. According to a bombshell investigation by The Daily Beast, the online community was apparently founded by Robert Fisher — a Republican state senator in New Hampshire.

Fisher's attempt to hide his identity was easily unraveled, it seems. The Daily Beast was able to trace his username, Pk_atheist, through a series of related blogs that Fisher also authored, along an internet path. The publication says this is what eventually led to Fisher's personal Facebook account and to the computer-repair franchise he owns.

For those unfamiliar with the Red Pill Subreddit, its origins can be found in the online community of self-described "pickup artists," with more than 200,000 subscribers. As the name suggests, pickup artists employ what can only be described as degrading tactics to lure women, with a latent hatred of and contempt for women at their roots. Take a quick gander at the page's postings and it's nearly impossible to not be offended.

Postings linked to the lawmaker are both typical of the Red Pill community and deeply disturbing. The Daily Beast reported that Fisher wrote posts that characterized women as having "sub-par intelligence" and called women's personalities "lackluster and boring, serving little purpose in day to day life." Another view into Fisher's beliefs is a post dated four years ago, in which he describes the one thing he finds redeeming about women: "it is literally the body that makes enduring these things worth it."

In another forum, in which The Daily Beast says Fisher wrote under the pseudonym Fred Frederickson, Fisher reportedly shared a troubling stance on rape. "I'm going to say it—Rape isn't an absolute bad, because the rapist I think probably likes it a lot," Fisher wrote. "I think he'd say it's quite good, really."

As you can see, Fisher's alleged posts run the gamut of antifeminist and offensive. Though he denied creating the Red Pill board when confronted with evidence by The Daily Beast, Fisher later admitted to the state legislature on April 25 that he authored the posts but that they were "out-of-context" and "nearly a decade old."

Fisher, who was elected in 2014, apparently has no plans of resigning, according to an email he wrote to local news station WMUR9. Fisher's peers in the Senate, however, are pressing him to do so. Even the state's Republican governor, Chris Sununu, encouraged Fisher to resign on April 26, the day after The Daily Beast's story was published.

Though Fisher's username is no longer the moderator of Red Pill, the community will continue to thrive. And the forum's posters are certainly unperturbed by the mainstream attention: the forum's top story presently is one titled "All Women Lie About Rape — Part Three."