In the wake of the Portland train stabbings that left two men dead and one seriously wounded after they tried to stop a white supremacist from harassing several women, Paul Elam — still probably the best-known Men’s Rights Activist online — posted a tweet that spoke volumes — not about the incident itself, but about the utter moral bankruptcy of the Men’s Rights movement.
https://twitter.com/anearformen/status/868917239143178240
When other Tweeters objected, Elam doubled down and began spewing insults — aimed not just at his critics but at the murdered men themselves.
https://twitter.com/anearformen/status/869066210964631552
https://twitter.com/anearformen/status/869068999577006080
In one tweet, he suggested that the victims themselves were the cause of the violence that left them dead.
https://twitter.com/anearformen/status/869064408252772354
In his capacity as a leader of what is essentially a hate movement, Elam has said many terrible things over the years — from his post suggesting that women who go home with men without wanting to have sex with them are “damn near demanding” to be raped” to a short story offering an apologia for — indeed, a glorification of — domestic abuse. These tweets, I think, rank up there with his most reprehensible writings, for two main reasons.
First, as many observers have noted, it was not “chivalry” that killed these men. It was an angry and hateful man with a knife who was harassing women on a train.
Elam thinks it unfair that the tenets of chivalry call upon men to protect women — why should men have to serve as unpaid bodyguards for women, he has often asked? What he doesn’t like to talk about is that these volunteer bodyguards aren’t protecting women from bears — there aren’t a lot of those in my neighborhood — but in the overwhelming majority of cases from other men.
There are a lot of problematic things about “white knights,” as Elam insists upon calling them, but the plain fact is that the “good men” that Elam castigates as terminally stupid would be out of a job if there weren’t so many bad men around harassing and abusing women.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, Elam is essentially declaring war on the very thing that sets us apart from brute nature — our ability to feel empathy for others, including people unlike ourselves. A man standing up for a woman who’s being harassed may or may not be engaging in an act of chivalry but it is certainly an act of altruism and basic human solidarity. It’s driven by the same empathetic and altruistic impulse that led so many non-Muslims here in the US to rush to their nearest airports to protest Trump’s Muslim ban.
This sort of cross-cultural solidarity is pretty much the only thing that can save our country from the hatred and meanness that is Trumpism. We need more empathy, not less.
Elam would rather we raise our sons not to feel this sort of empathy towards women. That’s bad enough. But he’s not the only MRA with an empathy problem. And it isn’t confined to his feelings about women.
It’s not just that MRAs are indifferent towards, if not actively hostile, towards women; they lack empathy towards boys and men as well. Indeed, in one notorious post (archived here; I wrote about it here), Elam literally told the “troubled men” who have turned to A Voice For Men for help to ““go fucking bother someone else with your problems” if they weren’t donating money to his site, which is to say him, as he keeps the donations for himself.
Even though he seems to have taken in literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations over the years, he’s never bothered to even try to set up, say, a hotline for men. Instead, he’s set himself up as a sort of ersatz internet therapist for men — he has no actual training as a therapist — literally charging the “troubled men” he claims to be an advocate for $90 an hour to talk to him on Skype.
But he’s not the only MRA who combines a hatred for women with an utter lack of interest in doing anything altruistic for their fellow men.
In the first few years of second wave feminism in the late 60s and early 70s, feminist activists set up shelters and women’s centers and countless other entities designed to benefit women in desperate need of help. In the seven years I’ve been covering the Men;s Rights movement, MRAs haven’t even set up a single hotline, much less a functional men’s shelter. The only notable MRA, er, victory? Being so obnoxious they’ve convinced numerous media sites to shut down their formerly MRA-infested comments sections.
It’s no wonder MRAs feel such hostility towards real heroes. They’re only heroes in their own minds.
@Thatoneuselessfool
Hmm. I know how best to respond to that. Where’s my whip and stereotypical german outfit?
Ah yes.
You foolish fool. None of that made any sense whatsoever, and can be easily disproven with any of the evidence previously presented. You are a useless witness! The prosecution has no use for you, you foolish fool who foolishly fools.
@Bina
Yes. The assumption among good anthropologists is that the people who used the tools are the people who invented them. We also have women to thank for the concepts of traps and weapons. I’ve heard convincing arguments to that effect.
@ yourgreatestnightmare
May I ask, are you targeting a specific individual because you imagine they’re the most vulnerable? I notice for instance you backed off when your initial targets weren’t bothered by you, and indeed found you marginally a source of amusement.
You see I’m just wondering about the power dynamic. You obviously feel terribly inadequate. And so if you can just rattle one person’s cage a tiny bit, you can perhaps gain a quantum of self respect?
This all ties in with the thesis I mentioned earlier. So it would be terribly helpful if you could confirm or deny my suspicions.
@Troubelle
My lungs, throat, and sinuses are all shot due to work sickness, and I just did sing it! Terribly! Love the horns throughout idea too ?
That song now reminds me of this one, so more singing terribly to Gaea for me 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=784Qdy8YeJ4
(she’s just like ‘shut up, human, nobody cares. And you’re way off key…’)
@Checkmate
(\
@Sandra:
Oooooo, women as the original hunter-gatherers, too? That makes me…TINGLY. (And would explain why I’m so good at gathering wild food, as well as growing mine own.)
And here’s something else that might interest Trollicus, assuming he can read: Men are in the nasty habit of appropriating a whole lot of intellectual properties which actually belong to WOMEN. There’s a veritable history of it, even!
@ ignoresandra
Men are in the nasty habit of appropriating a whole lot of intellectual properties which actually belong to WOMEN. There’s a veritable history of it, even!
Hope this helps.
YourGreatestNightmare went from funny to creepy to funny again. Is this real life?
Creepyraper,
http://cdn.gurl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/princess-leia-frustrated.gif
@Bina
Well, yes. There are convincing arguments for women being the people who’ve always been responsible for major innovations in food and medicine.
And the “weapons” thing wasn’t supposed to be hunting. It was supposed to imply we have women to thank for the concept of technology applied to killing human beings. The argument, evo-psychy as it is, is that as women are generally weaker than men physically and generally have a shorter reach, the first weapon was probably made by a woman to level the playing field. So, without women, warfare would consist solely of legions of men headlocking each other into submission. Right or wrong, the concept of technology applied to the death or defeat of human beings is a cornerstone of history as we know it.
I don’t know if I buy it in its entirety. But I think it’s worth keeping in mind.
@Alan Robertshaw
Yes, they are. Men suck in this respect.
@ PeeVee
Oh yeah, in all likelihood you’re absolutely correct. It’s just the logic that confuses me, you know? Because given the whole relative anonymity of the internet, right, who’s gonna get mad and punish a kid because they’re too young to use the word “bitch” instead of “bishes?”
Live a little, tiny troll boy! Use adult words! You can even type the word “fuck” if you want to! Your sweaty little hands *probably* won’t even burst into flame.
Ooh, or better yet, go watch The Heat and keep an eye out for the scene where straight-laced Sandra Bullock uses awkward, clunky curse words to tell off a room full of cops. Or the bit in Paul where Kristen Wiig decides it doesn’t matter if she sins anymore and tries to swear for the first time. They’re both funny movies starring good actresses and it’s way better use of your time.
Creepyraper,
http://33.media.tumblr.com/941fb459fa32da4a0aa31d0f1f43249d/tumblr_njdrz0Y8G21rsrbdko1_500.gif
“My current hypothesis is that you have little experience with actual women and you find them a little scary and intimidating. As a result you’ve latched onto the misogyny crowd because their rhetoric gives you a mild feeling of power; and you find that a bit comforting. You may be feeling a little bit disconcerted now because you’re not getting the reaction you hoped. People here are laughing at you somewhat and that’s making you uneasy. Hence the attempt at laughing it off with your latest post.
Am I close? I’m not trying to take the piss here, this is a genuine enquiry. Someone suggested to me there’s a ‘standard trajectory to radicalisation’ (as they eloquently put it) and I’m curious as to whether you fit into that model.”
Suck my crank, doc. Aren’t we lucky to have sociopaths like you in the ‘industry’. Besides mental masturbation to sexually abused boys taken from your patients, what do you do for fun? You and I should get together. We’ve a whole lot more anal fissures to investigate. Dibbs on top. I’m an ‘alpha’. You’re obviously a natural bottom. Grease up ahead of time. You know the ‘drill’.
@Alan:
http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/000/681/what-you-did-there-i-see-it.thumbnail.jpg
@Alan Robertshaw
Translation:
“You are completely correct. The fact that you clearly aren’t scared of me is freaking me out, and I’ve singled you out as the person I need to break if I’m going to get anyone at all here to take me seriously.”
@Sandra:
Heh. Well, that would explain why the ancient Greeks considered bow-and-arrow shooting unmanly, and only hand-to-hand combat sufficiently masculine. Which made things rather awkward for Odysseus’s son, Telemachus — his name means “fights from a distance”, implying he was an archer rather than a sword-fighter or a rasslin’ kind of guy.
Holy crap, is it the nineties? I remember saying that phrase, suck my crank, when I was like 8. That was in 2002. I’m starting to buy the theory that you’re, like, 12 years old now.
Edit: At 23, my favorite euphemism is donger.
@Checkmate
The idiot does talk like some guys I knew when I was younger.
@ Bina, I remember reading that for most cultures, long ranged fighting was considered kind of wimpy. Except for a large part of feudal Japan, where archery was considered way more important than sword skills.
YourGreatestNightmare’s posturing is the funniest thing I’ve read all day. Please, keep the laughs coming!
@ yourgreatestnightmare
Oh I’m not a doctor; I don’t even play one on TV.
But thank you for finally responding. You haven’t answered any of my questions though. Like I say, it would be so helpful if you could. Just your age would do initially. The consensus seems to be you are very young. That’s my feeling too, as you know.
Perhaps you would care to disabuse us, or not, as the case may be?
@Axe
It’s more like it’s shot my upper and lower ranges. (Made it odd when I tried to voice Mimi from Super Paper Mario [it’s a tradition amongst me and my sibs to voice video game characters] and turned into a squeaky teenage boy.)
But yeah. I plan to angle for…jazz, I think. Some subset of it. Slow for the intro, and frantic and blaring from there on out.
@YourWolololololololololol
hey
is me
low hanging fruit
pick me
by all means try to mock me for existing
@ bina
Ooh, that’s today’s new fact; cheers.
@Checkmate:
Yup. And they elevated archery to a higher art than anyone else, too. Even Robin Hood would be envious.
(And I’d say it was he, even if a mythical figure, who seemed to have turned the tide in archery’s favor, at least in the British Isles. He also seems to have been their earliest proto-socialist.)
@Bina
And it also handily explains why the Greeks, Japanese, Norse, and plenty of other cultures have depictions of women armed with spears and bows. Some of them explained away as “Goddesses” or “Supernatural” but the thing about spirituality and superstition is that it always starts with fact in some way.
We’ll never really know how much the Romans destroyed because of the doctrine that allowed their empire to thrive (Read: Destroy all other cultures), or the Christians destroyed because of their religious doctrine (Read: Women are evil and all should be oppressed by men). But I find the depiction of Athena…and Valkyries…with spears to be highly suggestive that such things weren’t unknown to those cultures. And of course it’s a matter of historical fact that some women trained as Samurai in feudal Japan, and others became warrior nuns, and still others fought in defense of their homes.
From these datapoints, plus that women fought disguised as men in the American Revolution and the American Civil War… The only conclusion I can draw is that women have fought in every war, and men have erased that history.
http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Baby_729e40_820673.jpg