How bad ideas get started: The “Apex Fallacy,” the “Frontman Fallacy,” and the murderer Marc Lepine
Would MRAs still be into the Apex Fallacy if boards of directors looked like this?
So some Men’s Rightsers are up in arms because the powers that be at Wikipedia just deleted a page devoted to a phony “logical fallacy” invented by a friend of Paul Elam. According to the now-deleted Wikipedia page, “the apex fallacy refers to judging groups primarily by the success or failure at those at the top rungs (the apex, such as the 1%) of society, rather than collective success of a group.”
In other words, it’s a convenient way for MRAs to hand-wave away any evidence that men, collectively, have more power than women. Mention that men hold the overwhelming majority of powerful positions in the worlds of politics and business, and, I don’t know, podiatry, and MRAs will shout “apex fallacy” and do a little victory dance. Rich and powerful dudes don’t count, because of poor and powerless dudes!
On the Wikipedia discussion page devoted to the question of deleting the apex fallacy entry, one Wikipedia editor – who voted “strong delete” – noted that
This is men’s rights activist astroturfing. The guy above [in the discussion] isn’t posting examples of its usage because they’re all on websites showcasing brutal misogyny and hateful ignorance, like A Voice for Men.
He’s got a point. When I did a Google search for the term, my top ten results (which may be different than your top ten results, because that’s how Google works) included posts on The Spearhead; The Men’s Rights subreddit; Genderratic (TyphonBlue’s blog); Emma the Emo’s Emo Musings; and a tweet from the little-followed Twitter account of someone calling himself Astrokid MHRA. In other words, five of the ten results were MRA sites, several of them with explicit links to A Voice for Men. (That “MHRA” is a dead giveaway.)
The top result, meanwhile, linked to a post on the blog of the delightful Stonerwithaboner, who doesn’t consider himself an MRA, as far as I know. But he’s still kind of a shit, and he did recently confess to being (as I suspected) the person who was going around posting comments on manosphere sites as David H. F*cktrelle, Male Feminist Extraordinaire ™.
So, in other words , I think it’s fair to say that the term “apex fallacy” has not yet achieved academic or philosophical respectability just yet.
The deleted Wikipedia page attributes the term “apex fallacy” to Helen Smith, a psychologist who is a longtime friend to A Voice for Men, and dates it to an interview Smith gave to the odious Bernard Chapin in 2008.
But the idea seems to be a simple reworking of a bad idea that’s been floating around in Men’s Rights circles for a lot longer than that.
Back in the 1990s, New Zealand Men’s Rights Activist Peter Zohrab came up with what he called the “Frontman Fallacy,” a notion he spread via the alt.mens-rights newsgroup on Usenet and elsewhere; the term has been widely adopted in Men’s Rights circles since then. As Zohrab defined the term,
the Frontman Fallacy is the mistaken belief that people (men, specifically) who are in positions of authority in democratic systems use their power mainly to benefit the categories of people (the category of “men”, in particular) that they belong to themselves.
So, in other words, if you mention that men hold the overwhelming majority of powerful positions in the worlds of politics, business, and podiatry, MRAs will shout out “frontman fallacy” and do a little victory dance. Rich and powerful dudes don’t count, because of poor and powerless dudes!
Like the extremely similar “apex fallacy,” this idea is rather too silly and facile to count as a real fallacy, but it has proven quite popular with MRAs. Looking through the google search results for “frontman fallacy,” I see links to a wide assortment of MRA sites using the term, including AVFM, Genderratic, Stand Your Ground, Backlash.com, Toysoldier, Mensactivism.org, Pro-Male Anti-Feminist Tech, Fathersmanifesto.net, Mensaid.com, and some others. Like “apex fallacy” it hasn’t made much progress outside the Men’s Rights movement.
What’s interesting about this to me is that this is not the only bad idea that Peter Zohrab has ever had.
Indeed, Zohrab had some extremely bad ideas about Marc Lepine, the woman-hating antifeminist who murdered 14 women at the École Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989.
While Zohrab, to my knowledge, never explicitly justified Lepine’s killings, he described the massacre in one notorious internet posting as an “Extremist Protest Against Media Censorship.” Of Lepine himself, he wrote
I bet you don’t know he wasn’t a misogynist – because you have been conned by the media (as usual). In fact, he was a Men’s Rights activist (albeit an extremist one), and one of the things he was protesting about was media censorship.
Zohrab went on to say that it was clear from Lepine’s writings – or at least writing alleged to have been written by him — that
he [was] against Feminists — not against women — he clearly states that he is protesting against various issues which are aspects of Feminist sexism.
Indeed, Zohrab seems not only sympathetic towards Lepine’s “cause” but seems to feel that he was being unfairly misrepresented:
The write-ups on Marc Lepine concentrate on character-assassination. They take things out of context, in the same way that fathers are slandered in the divorce/family court, in order to deprive them of custody or access. …
Marc Lepine was not only not sexist, as the media stated – he was actually fighting sexism!
Lots of MRAs love talking about the “frontman fallacy” or the new and improved “apex fallacy.” They don’t seem much interested in talking about Zohrab himself.
Like it or not, MRAs, this man is one of the leading figures in the emergence of the Men’s Rights movement online, and in the intellectual history of the movement, such as it is.
If I were a bit more paranoid, I might wonder if the emergence of the “apex fallacy” was some sort of an attempt as a rebranding, an attempt to push the “frontman fallacy” and its creator, the old, odd duck Peter Zohrab, with his embarrassingly sympathetic feelings toward a mass murderer of women, down that famous memory hole.
P.S. Don’t read the comments to that MensActivism.org posting, unless you want to get really depressed.
Posted on April 29, 2013, in a voice for men, antifeminism, dozens of upvotes, drama kings, entitled babies, frontman fallacy, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, MRA, playing the victim, reddit, sympathy for murderers, terrorism and tagged antifeminism, marc lepine, men's rights, misogyny, MRA, wikipedia. Bookmark the permalink. 1,090 Comments.
Joe, change of subject. The post is also about mark lepine. Do your views on him reflect those of your fellow mras?
@Fade – it’s what you should do. It’ll be an enlightening experience for you.
Telling.
Joe lives on a boat.
Oodles
What about the people telling us to give away all our money rather than providing us with a citation? Are they clever?
I never lived in a “craphole sink estate/housing project” or w/e joe was referring to, but when my mom lost her job and we had to move into a really cheap apartment complex in a high crime rate zone, I remember everyone giving us “don’t go on walks outside the complex because *cough*you’ll get raped*cough*”. So yeah, I don’t know if the area was as bad as some of the people made is sound like, but people definitely wouldn’t have been telling that to a man. So I am not seeing men being privileged above women here.
@Joe
“@Fade – it’s what you should do. It’ll be an enlightening experience for you.”
And providing even a shred of evidence would be an enlightening experience for you.
Joe: the reason you’re insulted every time you shit on the rug here should be obvious, if you’re so fucking smart.
Why ya here? Upset that your hero Lepine is being besmirched?
Bee: I don’t think Joe has a morning height. I just used it as a distillation of his endless fucking whining.
Oh, noes! I’ve been disqualified from consideration, y’all! How will I ever live? Some tedious random MRA troll on the internet has decided that I do not have meaningful opinions! Woe! WOE!!!
I’m so sorry, gillyrosebee! *passes Kleenex*
I really think that our trolls are just a bunch of masochists too broke to hire dommes.
Actually, claiming that no women holds low paying jobs or live in poverty is insulting, and makes me wonder if Joe ever goes outside.
@Ugh- The burden of proof is on the person making an assertion. Can you cite an MRA writer who approves of rape?
@pemra
too many to cite
Ugh asked a question – ze didn’t make an assertion. And so the onus is not on hir.
As for your question – LOL
@Shiraz – another transparent effort to control the frame. I said: feminism has been successful in getting feminists money, power and privelege.
You tried to skew that into some bullshit you made up about what you thought I was “implying” = strawman.
@Archeo – you mean Mark Lepine the nutcase mass-murderer? Errr, generally I don’t consider the viewpoints of mass-murderers as having any real merit…
because….wait for it….
they’re mass murderers.
In fact I’ll go further – just being a one-off murderer or an attempted murderer* is plenty enough for me to disqualify you from consideration as someone with a valid POV about ANYTHING.
(*e.g. Hugo Schwyzer, by his own admission)
I don’t consider myself to be an “MRA” – because, to be honest there are far, far too many nutters in the “movement”. e.g. here in the UK – Tom “You are all WHORES! And the chairs are too hard!!” who’ssecondnameIforget.
As you might be gathering, the number of people whose opinions and POV I consider to be worth listening to are fairly small.
The main value I get out of reading around is not so much the commentariat as the occasional links to research (carried out by gov’t depts or such, who do have their own agenda, natch, but that’s fairly predictable.) and news that I might not otherwise come across.
Well, hellkell, we’ve taken all their oodles of power and doomed them to live in a
FEMA campcraphole sink estate/housing project, after all. It’s just one more step from forcing them to spend their days sitting on hard chairs in rooms with scented motherfucking candles. All in shades of pink, of course, because pink is the color of femtalitarniansm.And that’s real.
Shiraz, all women are Hillary Clinton.
Well, look on the bright side, even if the trolls aren’t reasonable at least they’re different! Today we have both frothing rage troll and wall of blah oh god won’t someone please talk to me troll.
@ cloudiah
I Am Hillarus?
@Joe
Come on, man you don’t need to be ableist to point out that lots of the MRAs are sexist pieces of shite.
Ps, where’s my citation? :)
@Bee – wait – did you just stoop to a “small dick” insult!? Bwhahahahaah!!
*slow handclap*
Seriously, how do you expect to ever have any credibility, ever?
@Ccassandra says
Sadly, I am in the state of rating trolls now. I think that pemra is less annoying that Joe because at least pemra pretends to engage sometimes, whereas joe’s idea of a rebuttal is “give away all your possessions, it’s enlightening”
hoethehoedeohdohoe:
1: Misusing ad hominem in a discussion about a bogus fallacy has GOT to be worth some kinda points. Please find the place where those points are redeemable and purchase for yourself one clue.
2: Contrary to your apparent opinion, much like the rest of the world, this conversation did not begin with your arrival in the thread. If you had bothered to exercise the least bit of internet courtesy, you would have noted the mockery being made of a particular MRA douchecanoe for his incessant use of the term “hoe” every other word. Since, quite frankly, all you MRAs really do look alike on the internet (because so few of you say anything original that wasn’t posted here several times over the years), it was pretty much guaranteed that your nick was going to get similar mockery–because, as you apparently failed to notice, hoehoehoe, that’s our purpose here–mocking hateful asshats such as yourself.
Oh shit, he just mentioned HUGO SCHWYZER! He’s our idol!
Not.
Feminism has resulted in some women achieving positions of wealth, power and prestige (and yes, even “privelege” sometimes).
Funny thing, though. There was this person I found on the internet who told me that I shouldn’t evaluate the condition facing all members of a given group based on the very small number of individuals from that group who had achieved relative positions of wealth, power and prestige, because the experiences of those very few individuals had actually little or nothing in common with the rest of the people from that group…
@Fade – did you ever ask the men around you what dangers they faced in that situation?
Or the things that men were warned to look out for?
Why do you assume that men weren’t raped there?
Did you ever look into the rate at which men were beaten / stabbed / shot / mugged / killed in that area?
If you look at the stats in general, men are something like 3 to 4 times more likely to suffer street attacks by a stranger (other than rape) up to and INCLUDING being murdered.
Now I have heard it argued by feminists (on another board) that men’s deaths are not as bad as the suffering of women who do not die, because “once they’re dead their suffering is over”. Do you subscribe to that point of view Fade?
Oh no, I know what “Shorter Joe” means. I was just referring to the part of the thread where Joe either pretended not to know or actually did not know.
Again, hilarious with the not getting it thing. But I’m starting to think you’re not joking, and that makes me very sad.
“Morning height” has nothing to do with dick size, Joe. We don’t care about the size of your dick, just the ARGLE BARGLE and the lack of ability to make an argument or provide citations for your claims.
Joe: you simple dipshit, Bee was not making a small dick joke. Can you read? Like, at all?
Oh, and you are an MRA, deny the title all you want. If it walks like a shithead and talks like a shithead, it’s probably an MRA around here.
@gilly – you seem to be new here, so you’ll have missed out on the thread where I disagreed vehemently with Tom “Whores! Chairs!” Thingy.
Particularly on his very unpleasant attitude to sex workers.
“Shiraz, all women are Hillary Clinton.”
We are Hilary Clinton you will be assimilated!!!!! Eleven
Hi everyone! Have not actually read this thread, fade just told me there were trolls here.
I didn’t assume men weren’t raped before. I did assume one guy who lived there was warning us off for sexist reasons, because he said “EVEN I wouldn’t got there, and I’m a 20 year old guy”.
Now, in tiny words I shall explain: Even implies that he thinks he needs to stick it out more. Because normally, a 20 year old guy would be fine in places women aren’t. But EVEN he wouldn’t go there.
I think men’s deaths are bad, and I have no idea why you brought it up? I mean, are we supposed to randomly accuse people of irrevalent things?
First Joe, some men think that women deserve to be raped for being drunk. Do you suscribe to that view, joe?
What other board? Citation needed motherfucker.
Another lame “gotcha” attempt from Joe.
@”@gilly – you seem to be new here, so you’ll have missed out on the thread where I disagreed vehemently with Tom “Whores! Chairs!” Thingy.
Particularly on his very unpleasant attitude to sex workers.”
Don’t worry, I’ll give you the “not as despicable as you could have been award”
I also love how “men get murdered so trying to confine women via rape culture is totally not bad” according to Joe
Aw, Joe wants a cookie for not being totes evil once! DENIED.
“Now I have heard it argued by feminists (on another board) that men’s deaths are not as bad as the suffering of women who do not die, because “once they’re dead their suffering is over”. Do you subscribe to that point of view Fade?”
O o I so have not heard this one, and also, joe, you seem to be missing a citation, surprising nobody
Sure, that makes sense.
Do you also know that women are 24 times more likely to be raped than men?
That women are much more likely to be murdered by abusive partners than men? That women are also far more likely to face street harassment, rape threats, and so on?
DAMMIT! Ninja’d on the cookie! *shakes fist at hellkell*
I am genuinely curious as to how frothyBrit got from “morning height” to “small penis”. What happened in the strange and excitable labyrinth of his brain to link that initial comment not only to cocks, but to small cocks in particular?
Dude, if you find your morning wood fascinating I’m happy for you, but it’s rather silly to assume that everyone else has cocks on the brain just because you do.
testing… testing
my last two comments haven’t gone through
“@Shiraz – another transparent effort to control the frame. I said: feminism has been successful in getting feminists money, power and privelege.
You tried to skew that into some bullshit you made up about what you thought I was “implying” = strawman.”
Well, boo, I had to imply that you don’t like any women in power…when we asked for proof of this elaborate conspiracy to de-throne all men, you mentioned there are women in positions of power. Since there is no way you cannot know that most of those positions of power are held by men, I had to assume that the small minority of female congresswomen and so on, was offensive to you.
I mean, come on, you’re a shit writer. When one is reading over shit writing, deductive reasoning will come into play. A reader doesn’t have any other choice. If you don’t want to be misunderstood, then use your words properly.
Now, tell me again about how there are no women in poverty are working shit jobs. That was interesting.
for our troll boy
let’s see if this actually works. If not, I’m gonna stop, because it’s way too much time dedicated to making a lame joke
@CassandraSays We can say what we want, he just came here to argue with the voices of the straw feminists in his head.
…which must be what happens when feminists get all those oodles of power: they achieve the ability to beam their thoughts right through the tinfoil!
“If you look at the stats in general, men are something like 3 to 4 times more likely to suffer street attacks by a stranger (other than rape) up to and INCLUDING being murdered.”
I see he deliberately left out rape. You can’t pick and choose, Joey.
@Marie
Was it pemra who was all like “Men suffer violence more than women if you leave out the kind of violence that affects mostly women”? Yeah, he and joe should totally be friends. Or argleblarge at each other, which ever comes first.
“…which must be what happens when feminists get all those oodles of power: they achieve the ability to beam their thoughts right through the tinfoil!”
Yes!!!! Our final mission has been accomplished!!!!!!!
“Now I have heard it argued by feminists (on another board) that men’s deaths are not as bad as the suffering of women who do not die, because “once they’re dead their suffering is over”. Do you subscribe to that point of view Fade?”
If someone said that on some other board, why aren’t you there fighting about it, instead of here where no one said anything of the kind?
@Shiraz
because of the HIVVEEE MIND!!!!
No women have ever lived in poverty or worked shit jobs.
Shiraz: hivemind, plus Joe needs his “gotcha” fix.
Oodles reminds me of noodles. I think I’ll take my oodles of power, boil them, then have them with butter and some pecorino romano.
Do not feed your oodles of noodles to the poodles, they’ll get sick.
@Aaliyah – Ugh’s “question” transparently contains an assertion. Just like the counter-analogy I provided.
@Hellkell – yeah, I don’t have to wear a label, because you say so. Fuck that. Not everyone who disagrees with you is an MRA per se.
Morning “height” as in morning “wood”. That’s what that reference conveys to the reader who isn’t part of your little clique.
@Fade – yeah, I don’t subscribe to your PC “abelist” bullshit either.
Also, I learned long, long ago on manboobz that there is zero point in engaging in the laborious process of providing links to references, because: not one manboobzer will ever read them anyway. So, don’t ever expect me to provide you lot with a citation for anything, I know it’s pointless.
@Gilly – there are huge numbers of feminists who are not at the apex of society who have acquired money, power and privelege as a direct consequence of feminism. I can’t believe I’m even having this argument – it’s clear to anyone that feminism has been a hugely successful movement.
You only have to look at the ridiculous grasping at things-to-moan-about that’s going on now (e.g. video games) to get that feminism has already grabbed most of the big stuff that feminists wanted.
@freemage –
1. You are incorrect. I used ad hominem correctly.
2. I couldn’t care less about what you think is rude on the internet or not.
Shiraz, just make sure you’re using noodles and not poodles. Don’t boil the poodles!
Is it a gotcha fix or a rage wank, hellkell? I dunno.
Cloudiah, if we’re all Mrs. Clinton, where are our checks? ;)
A fall-arse-y?
Very few people would hear “morning height” and think it refers to “morning wood.” Instead, they would just ask what it means.
I will not boil the poodles…only the noodles and the oodles.
…
You cannot argue a point if you are not trying to even back it up. I mean, you say “poverty is worse for men”, and then you refuse to provide us with any citation, say the only solution is to give away all our stuff because it will be enlightening, and then that there is no need for a citation because it would not make us agree with you.
So…
Yeah, you’re not exactly winning any awards here. What do you hope to accomplish?
Also, given your complete denial of sexism, I am not suprised that you do not think ableism exists. So fucking what? Saying you refuse to believe that the sky is blue during the day does not really change that. I mean, I can say “I refuse to believe in gravity”, but I’d still better not jump off any airplanes.
Marc Lepine = antifeminist.
Anders Breivik = antifeminist.
Thomas Ball = antifeminist/mra.
George Sodini = Not sure if he was an antifeminist per se, but it’s hard to imagine a guy who murders several women because he felt he wasn’t getting laid enough being cool with feminism. Also he’d attended PUA seminars.
Don’t go asking for a citation, though! You know those are pointless!
“I couldn’t care less about what you think is rude on the internet or not.”
Really? You complained about personal attacks and name calling a page ago.
@ Joey
“Morning “height” as in morning “wood”. That’s what that reference conveys to the reader who isn’t part of your little clique.
”
Um….. No. I want around for much mr. Al stuff ( that’s where it came from right)? And my first assumption was not wood.
“@Fade – yeah, I don’t subscribe to your PC “abelist” bullshit either.
Also, I learned long, long ago on manboobz that there is zero point in engaging in the laborious process of providing links to references, because: not one manboobzer will ever read them anyway. So, don’t ever expect me to provide you lot with a citation for anything, I know it’s pointless.
”
You don’t provide citations, so you wouldn’t know. Also, if you don’t bother to back up what you say, Joey, can’t you just argue with a squirrel? Or can even animals not stand you?
Uncle Joe: It’s a quick and simple way of saying: I refuse to accept that women may be more ill-treated by the world than men are.
@titianblue – if you find that sentence “incoherent” I recommend you go back to school.
It was incoherent; only by having enough of your backstory (or a deep understanding of the ways in which dishonest actors behave in comments sections) was it parsable.
What it was is a shaming tactic. It was an accusation that “someone” was so threatened by “the apex fallacy” that it couldn’t be allowed to survive. One sees the same arguments from Truthers, Birthers and inventors who have figured out the 75mpg carbeurator; and are being kept down by “The Automakers”.
For that to be happening (i.e. “The Apex Fallacy” being “suppressed”) requires an actual conspiracy, rather than an analysis of the thesis on it’s logical merits.
It has none. It’s a dodge, a piece of apologism which let’s a dude who got a raw break in life pretend that men; as a class, don’t have it easier than women, as a class.
As such it’s a tool for institutionalising misogyny, which is why you, and your fellow travellers, like it so much. It lends a veneer of reason to your bigotry, and hate.
@archeothingy – your use of “@theFirstHoe” is clearly an example of juvenile name-calling / ad hominem.
It’s the former, not the latter. That you think it the latter is why you are whining about “The Apex Fallacy”. You clearly don’t know the meaning of the terms of known fallacies. It’s no surprise you would be taken in by neologisms dressed up as if they too were known fallacies.
“katz, I am really hoping your comic includes a trained attack puma because you’re good at drawing animals with personality. Actually you’re just good at drawing, period, and I am jealous.”
Any chance Poutine is the Incredible Hulk of the cat world?
MaudeLL, love your new kitty avatar. :)
@Aaliyah –
1 – the stats on male victims of rape are much less reliable than those on women victims, which stats are also unreliable – for lots of reasons. So, I’ll not buy your bald, unsupported assertion of 24 times.
On the strength of what I have read elsewhere, I will acknowledge that as far as I can see women are more likely to be raped than men, but as to exactly what that ratio is, I do not agree that reliable evidence is available.
2 – trying to boil the discussion of murder rates down to only those by intimate partners, is a transparent effort to ignore the ABSOLUTE murder rate, in which men are 3 to 4 times more often the victims. I have come across this time and time again from feminists and it is very telling. It conveys to me that you have zero compassion / interest in what happens to men, even if those men are the victims of murder – because you simply place zero value on men’s lives.
3 – harrasment and threats are unpleasant (I have been the victim of such), but they are not even in the same league as being physically attacked (again, I’ve been a victim of violence), let alone murdered or raped.
And yes, I’m obviously still alive, and no, I have not been raped or sexually assaulted.
(altho’ I was once briefly “fiddled with” by an ear / nose and throat doctor – who in retrospect had absolutely no business touching my genitals, but I was very young, naive and less assertive then.
Oh, and there was the time I repeatedly told that one woman “no”, and she ignored it, but that was very different, from my perspective)
@whoever – I did not “leave out” rape – I acknowledged that it was that exception to the “rule” of who is most often the victim of violent crime (men vs. women).
Not unless you have dick on the brain.
Maybe if you actually read shit around here instead of barging in to drop turds in our conversational punchbowl, you would know this.
@Fade – wait, wait. Let me savour this moment. You just compared poltical constructs / intellectual conceits with…. the force of gravity. Bwahahahahhahahaaa!!