Category Archives: paul elam
Spinning the Eivind Berge arrest: Reddit vs. The Spearhead
Berge: Too provocative for his own good?
The spinning of Norwegian Men’s Rights blogger Eivind Berge’s arrest for threatening police officers has begun.
Over on Reddit, the leading hangout for the Men’s Rights movement’s “moderates,” most MRAs seem to want to have nothing to do with Berge’s extremism (which is good), to the extent that many of them are declaring him not an MRA at all (which is ridiculous).
Sorry, guys. Berge may literally be the world’s worst MRA, and one that most MRAs have been content to ignore, but he’s still an MRA. He’s described himself as such many times (e.g., here); he has many of the same views and obsessions as “mainstream” MRAs; and he’s even got a few outspoken MRA fans. And while some Reddit Men’s Rightsers were distancing themselves from Berge in the wake of his arrest, others were respectfully discussing a blog post from Berge’s girlfriend Emma the Emo (who shares many of his views) taking aim at what she called “American pedophile hysteria.”
Over on the Spearhead, the more reactionary W.F. Price has a rather different spin on Berge, as encapsulated by the title of his blog post on the subject: “Eivind Berge Arrested for Provocative Rhetoric.”
Evidently, threatening to stab a police officer (and announcing the day on which you plan to do so) is merely a sort of rhetorical flourish.
It’s a strange and often incoherent post, in which Price seems to argue that Berge’s threats don’t count as real threats because … he made them publicly? Here, you make sense of it:
Eivind Berge has been posting some pretty provocative stuff for quite a while now, including his desire to kill police for enforcing misandric laws. I agree with his girlfriend that it was a bunch of hot air, but he got arrested for it anyway. Despite his support for Anders Breivik, who decimated the youth wing of the Marxist/Islamist Norwegian left in a solo Knights Templar crusade last year, I seriously doubt Eivind would have carried out any violent acts. Breivik, who really meant business, kept his plans to himself.
The truth is that people who manage to pull off spectacular terrorist attacks are almost always those who don’t say anything about them beforehand. Think Mohammed Atta vs. James Ujaama.
Yeah, it’s not like Osama bin Laden ever made threats about attacking the US. Or that abusers who threaten their exes ever actually harm them. Or any of a million other examples in which someone who issues a threat carries out said threat.
The lesson here is that if you want to be political, there’s a sort of tortoise/hare dynamic at work. The impetuous, fast hare tends to run out of steam (or run into trouble with the law) fairly quickly. The slow-and-steady tortoise, on the other hand, keeps trudging on and wins the race. …
[T]hreatening to kill people openly and loudly is essentially worthless.
Is Price really equating terrorists who plot their attacks secretly with the slow-and-steady tortoise who wins the race?
Who the hell knows. But he is clearly offering an apologia for making violent threats on the dubious grounds that those who threaten their enemies openly are somehow therefore not dangerous.
Later Price offers this completely clear cut and definitive repudiation of violence.*
We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that violent action will do us any good. Of course violence does work, but the power of the state is so overwhelming today that individual acts are almost certain to fail. Furthermore, those who are willing to unleash violence on others must be prepared to die themselves, and must lead by example. Somehow, I don’t think many of us have reached that point. It’s a long road to get there, and I hold out the hope that it will never go that far.
[T]he point is that anyone who condones violent action loudly and publicly, but doesn’t back it up, can’t be taken seriously.
In the comments, Eric complains that men who commit violence for putatively political reasons may suffer the indignity of being called bad names:
As we have all seen repeatedly, violence against men is socially and politically sanctioned violence. A man committing violence in defense of his rights is labelled a ‘terrorist’ or an ‘extremist’. The case of Thomas Ball is a perfect example. …
The feminist elites are bullies who are aware of their power and our inability to ‘push back’ in any way that will cause them deserved pain (at least for now). But like all bullies, they are also rabid egomaniacs and fear anyone who doesn’t bow slavishly to their power. The more men who are informed as to their true nature and who are taught to despise them, the weaker these bullies become because their fear of exposure and losing their power is a mania.
I guess Eric’s main beef is with the English language. I’m pretty sure that using violence to cause “deserved pain” in an attempt to intimidate your political enemies is basically the dictionary definition of “terrorism.”
Further down in the comments, Eric sets forth a curious little conspiracy theory involving, well, me. In one comment, he suggests that the attention I’ve given to the Berge arrest
illustrates that the anti-MRM forces are primed and ready for a ‘false flag’ or provocateur-instigated ‘incident’. … The feminist elites have noticably shifted from typical ridicule to painting the MRM as a dangerous extremist movement.”
In a followup comment, he elaborates on this peculiar logic:
Futrelle … does seem unusally worked up. …
I have the feeling that something ominous is in the wind.
This kind of language out of the Mangina League; the SPLC’s attention; the spate of troll and provocateur attacks and hacking on mens’ blogs; this crap going on in Scandanavia—there’s definately a pole-shift among our enemies and it stinks of orchestration.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t make up many years worth of threatening comments from Eivind “killing at least one cop is on my bucket list” Berge. So does this mean that Berge is some sort of deep-cover feminist operative? What does that make Paul “fucking your shit up gives me an erection” Elam?
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*
“What a lifeless, limp, ego-centric homo,” and other bon mots from the A Voice for Men crowd
So Mr. Paul Elam was apparently so offended by this video from Jay Smooth defending Anita Sarkeesian and her Tropes Vs Women video project against its many misogynistic detractors that he sat down and wrote out a carefully reasoned rebuttal of all of Mr. Smooth’s points.
Nah, I’m kidding. He wrote a snide couple of paragraphs calling Smooth a “leftist scumbucket,” and a “chickenshit feminist quisling,” and invited his readers to jump in with their own dopey insults. And they did. Some highlights (that is, lowlights):
I showed Paul’s comment to an MRA friend, and he said, “dude, you have to stop talking to me. I don’t exist! I’m no more real than Paul Elam’s ‘gay friend.'”
Andybob added this to the debate:
Yes, that’s right, he’s saying Smooth is being a “fag” in order to score with women. Clearly we have a brilliant mind at work here.
Several comments later, Iron John, a man apparently oblivious to irony, weighed in with this gem:
On Reddit, after someone pointed out the homophobia in the comments, Elam responded with “comment mine much?”
I’m pretty sure you don’t get to complain about “comment mining” for homophobia when 1) you’re the guy behind the site and 2) you’re one of the ones shouting “fag.”
Notice that Zorro’s original comment got an equal number of upvotes and downvotes. Then Elam jumped in to give the homophobia his seal of approval. After that, it was nothing but upvotes for those using or approving of the homophobic slur.
Calling a dude a “fag” on the internet: Men’s Rights Activism at its finest!
Paul Elam: Call the Doctor!
Don’t go to THIS doctor, though. He does not seem very dedicated to his work.
Is there anything in the world that Paul Elam can’t blame on feminism? Apparently not.
In his latest post on A Voice for Men, Elam reports on a number of health problems he’s been dealing with – or not dealing with – for years. You see, despite chronic troubles with his gall bladder and with his breathing – which led to many ER visits over many years – Elam refused to get his gall bladder removed, or to give up smoking. For a while, he confesses, he was alternating puffs of cigarettes with hits from his Albuterol inhaler. But after numerous health scares, he reports, he’s finally dealing with his underlying issues, getting his gall bladder removed and weaning himself off the cigarettes.
I’m not going to mock him for any of this. Lots of people – especially men – have trouble pushing themselves to get the medical help they need. I’m one of them: the last time I went to the dentist it was because one of my teeth had gotten so rotten that a chunk of it broke off. There are a lot of mostly not-very good reasons I procrastinate about getting proper treatment for my health reasons, from simple denial to lack of funds. (Though, as I have sadly learned, waiting to go to the dentist until your teeth start breaking apart in your mouth does not actually save you money in the long run.)
Lots of guys won’t go to doctors because, as guys, they’ve been raised to believe they should grin and bear whatever pain they face. That’s one of the reasons feminists tend to criticize traditional notions of masculinity.
But for Elam, the problem is … feminism:
We live in a misandric culture, and often times, when we are scared enough or motivated by some other powerful force, we find that the root of the hatred is in the mirror staring back at us and mocking.
We men are raised with a sense of shame for having any needs. We are told, in fact, that we already have everything, and largely don’t deserve even the most basic of our needs for dignity, respect and love. If you look around in medical literature long enough, you will even see them shaming us for not going to the doctor more. Feminists have even used our tendency to neglect ourselves as a good reason to go full steam ahead with the unabashedly pro-female Obamacare.
This last charge is based on an almost completely delusional misreading of Obama’s health care legislation by our dear friend Antony Zarat. Elam continues:
And you can watch many men nod their heads in agreement with this crap. Sure, some of it is just the typical effects of feminist ideology on the brains of obsequious men, but there is something else at play here.
Can you guess what’s coming here? Yep, you got it, the motherfucking Titanic.
What made men willing to stand on the decks of sinking ships where their betters were loaded onto lifeboats? What makes men OK with being singled out for selective service? When is the last time you heard an average man point out to a woman who is whining that her great grandmother could not vote, that even today, unless a man signs an agreement with the government to use his body as cannon fodder, that he still won’t be allowed to vote?
Never mind that “women and children first” has never been official policy, nor even widely practiced. Never mind that feminists,while generally opposed to the draft, have lobbied for women as well as men to be subject to the same requirement to register for the draft. Never mind that the draft has been dead for decades. And never mind that exactly none of this is the fault of feminism.
We often have to point out to morons that being anti-feminist is not the same thing as being anti-woman. I think we would do well to remember from time to time that misandry is often not something done to us, but something we do to ourselves.
It is a monster that can live in any one of us, and often does. I have been doing battle with my own for a while. 25 years of consideration, soul searching and bucking the system and I am just now figuring out to go see a doctor when I have a problem.
Elam, dude: Despite your overweening narcissism, I have no trouble believing that on some level you hate yourself. Narcissism is often driven by insecurity, and no one who responds to even mild criticism with the level of rage that you do could be anything other than deeply insecure. But what you feel isn’t “misandry,” and feminists aren’t to blame. All that rage isn’t healthy for you. You should really get it checked out. And I’m not even joking.
Here’s Sleater-Kinney with “Call the Doctor,” though really only the title of the song is appropriate to the situation here.
BREAKING: Paul Elam of A Voice for Men is pig-biting mad at a dude who doesn’t hate Katherine Heigl
Over on A Voice for Men, noted human rights advocate Paul Elam has responded to criticism from a fellow antifeminist internet warrior in his typically logical, understated manner. Some highlights:
He’s whining, about jack shit, on behalf of a misandric cunt. …
Matt Forney just jerked off all over his bed sheets. And now it appears he is standing there like a virtual ‘tard, grinning about it and drooling.
At issue? Mr. Forney wrote a post some months back critical of the faux “offenders registry” called Register-Her, a pet project of A Voice for Men’s JohnTheOther in which female “bigots” – that is, feminists – are “registered” as “offenders” alongside female criminals. (Forney’s post originally appeared on the thankfully now-defunct blog In Mala Fide, but Elam only discovered it after Forney posted it on his own blog.)
In particular, Forney disagreed with Elam’s decision to “register” actress Katherine Heigl as a “bigot” after she made a Funny or Die PSA about spaying dogs and cats. The problem, for Elam and crew? That in the video she pretended to be a crazed testicle-hater obsessed with cutting off all balls, including those of human males. The AVFM crowd whipped themselves into a frenzy over this one, with Elam’s Number One Stooge JohnTheOther writing, in all seriousness:
Katherine Heigl’s supposedly humorous claim; that her advocacy of neutering pets is an outlet for her desire to chop human male’s balls off shouldn’t be taken out of context. The context being that she’s a creature of hollywood who lives in california – the same state which earlier this year saw Katherine Becker cut her husband’s penis off for the “offense” of wanting a divorce. …
We know it’s a joke. That’s the point. It’s both shocking, and plausibly deniable. It also wouldn’t be funny to most people if there was not an element of truth in it. Heigl’s “joke” included the word “yet”. This is an obvious nod to her awareness of increasing cultural acceptance of male-targeted violence and mutilation.
No, I have no fucking clue what on earth he means by that bit about the word “yet.” He goes on:
Male targeting violence persists and escalates because in the unconscious reptile corner of men’s minds, they think nodding along with whatever vile , violent, murderous shit the nearest vacuous barbie utters in her you-go-girl bubble of social enablement might get him approved for access to the magic vagina.
Like Elam, JohnTheOther apparently writes all his posts for AVFM with steam literally coming out of his ears.
Here’s the video in question. (Sorry, it won’t embed.) As you can see, the real butt of the joke is Heigl herself, and more generally narcissistic celebs who glom onto fashionable causes for all the wrong reasons. It’s not really a castration joke; it’s an actress making fun of her own reputation for narcissism. (And the video is also a serious attempt to raise awareness about the need to spay and neuter pets.)
Katherine Heigl, attempting to lull a dog into a false sense of security so she can remove its balls.
Forney, in the blog post that roused Elam’s incredibly easy-to-rouse fury, suggested that AVFM’s claimed outrage about Heigl’s video was both silly and a bit unconvincing:
Were you honestly offended? Did that video get you mad? It didn’t get me mad. I thought it was stupid and unfunny, but aside from that, I don’t care about it. After watching it, I just shrugged my shoulders and closed the tab.
Forney went on to suggest that any MRAs who were offended by the video were, well, basically a bunch of “phony pussies,” a virtual mirror-image of the Politically Correct:
In trying to gin up indignation over Heigl’s ball-cutting comments, Register-Her.com and the MRM are seeking to perpetuate our politically correct regime, not burn it to the ground and piss on its ashes. …
The men’s rights movement wants men to keep picking at their scabs, to wallow in self-pity for all eternity. That’s not a satisfying goal for me, or countless other men who want to rise out of the mud. Until MRAs address this issue, their movement will be stuck in neutral, regardless of their occasional victories.
Yes, that’s right. A dude posting on In Mala Fide — which was known for its blatant misogyny and its proud racism, among other terrible things — is the closest we’ve got to a “voice of reason” in this particular debate.
Elam, an MRA scab-picker extraordinaire, lashed out in barely coherent rage to Forney’s charges:
[T]his kind of chicken-shit nit picking by a supposed sympathizer is far more pathetic that the Heigl video could have ever hoped to be.
Why would the Heigl video hope to be pathetic? Also, how exactly can a video hope?
I write people like you off all the time. But then you have the gumption to parrot a bunch of keyboard courage about crushing your enemies? And you make fun of guys who get fucked over by the system? What a laugh. I don’t mean what you said, but you, personally.
You may be every bit as brave as your words. I doubt it, but I don’t know. What I do know is that your article is a misandric piece of shit. Based on your rhetoric, though, I would lay dollars to doughnuts you have never crushed so much as a Dixie Cup at a water cooler. Your kind of man never does.
Says the man whose entire life is devoted to bashing out angry internet screeds, and whose only known attempt at real-world organizing collapsed before it really even began.
You just shit on those out there taking the hits and doing the work, likely because you lack the conviction to stick your neck out for anything really important to anyone but yourself.
Personally, I would not talk to MRA’s about picking scabs until you quit being one.
I’m not sure if Elam is calling Forney a “scab” as a sort of random insult referring back to his mention of scabs, or if Elam thinks that Forney is a “scab” violating some imaginary MRA “sex strike” – or “cock blockade” – by not hating on the ladies every second of every day. I’m guessing it’s the latter, because Elam really is that delusional.
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EDITED TO ADD: Matt Forney has responded to Elam’s little tantrum here. At the end, he says this:
And since I can’t end this post without mentioning that David Futrelle has (reluctantly) defended me on this issue, mainly because Elam’s neckbeard fans are going to brandish Futrelle’s article as proof that I’m an evil crypto-feminist racist mangina, let me just say that Futrelle is an even more pathetic bitch than Elam, and I don’t want his support.
Don’t worry, lil dude. I don’t actually support you. I simply agree with you on a couple of points: that Elam is a total drama king, and that anyone who believes (or purports to believe) that Heigl’s video is something to get ENRAGED about is a twit.
MRAs would rather complain about “male disposability” than work to enable women to serve in combat
Men’s Rights Activists regularly complain that it is mostly men who serve in the armed forces, and that it is mostly male soldiers who are killed and injured in service to their country in wartime. MRAs also complain that, in the United States, only men have to sign up for the draft – though this is more of a formality than anything else, as the draft has been dead for decades and there is virtually no chance of it being resurrected any time soon.
MRAs love to cite the dominance of men in the armed forces as a prime example of what they call “male disposability,” and somehow manage to blame feminists for it all.
But it’s not feminists who are trying to keep women from becoming soldiers, or serving in combat. While some MRAs support the idea of women serving in the army, and having to register for the draft the same as men do, many others scoff at the very notion of women as soldiers, mocking their alleged female “weakness” and in some cases denigrating the service of women now in the armed forces as being equivalent to attending “day care camp.” (Not exactly.) These MRAs may complain that men bear the brunt of the costs of war. But they don’t actually want women to serve.
Not that it makes much of a difference, because the MRAs who do supposedly want women to share the same responsibilities as men aren’t doing shit about it. You know who is? Feminists. The National Organization for Women, while opposing the draft, has long argued that if registration is required of men, it should also be required of women. NOW has also opposed the ban on female soliders serving in combat. (Not that it’s easy to draw a clear line between combat and non-combat positions on the contemporary battlefields.)
Meanwhile, a group called the Molly Pitcher Project, made up of University of Virginia law students and headed by feminist law professor Anne Coughlin, is assisting two female soldiers who are now suing the Pentagon in an attempt to lift the combat ban.
Do you want to know who is opposing them – aside from the Pentagon’s lawyers? Take a look at some of the comments posted in response to a Los Angeles Times article on the lawsuit. Note: The quotes below are pretty egregious; some deal with military rape in a really offensive way. (Thanks to Pecunium for pointing me to them.)
These aren’t “cherry-picked” from hundreds of comments; these are the bulk of the comments that were left on the article.
Are any of these commenters MRAs? Maybe, maybe not, but certainly their misogynistic “logic” is virtually identical to that I’ve seen from misogynist MRAs opposed to women serving in combat. One thing they are clearly not is feminist.
If MRAs, or at least some of them, truly want a world in which men and women share equally in the responsibilities of military service (and both have equal opportunties for military leadership), they need to challenge the misogynists — within their movement and without — who argue that women simply aren’t fit for the battlefield. And they need to support the feminists who are actually trying to make a difference — instead of standing on the sidelines crying foul.
I don’t hold out much hope that this will ever happen. MRAs are much too enamored with their fantasies of male martyrhood.
A Voice for Men: Say no to homophobia! And then watch this hilarious video bashing lesbians!
Well, this is … interesting. So JohnTheOther has plopped out another rambling diatribe about evil feminists. This time he accuses them not only of “attacking male sexuality” but also (if I’m reading him correctly) of being a bunch of evil homophobes jealous that some men don’t want to have sex with women. You read this and tell me what you think he’s implying here:
Male sexuality is of course both demonized and treated as a form of predation, but also strictly limited to a narrow set of acceptable expressions. Outside of sexual identities which place men in positions to benefit women as sexual gate-keepers, masculine sexuality is generally condemned.
JTO would love to compare these alleged gay-man-hating feminists to the proudly gay-male-affirming Men’s Rights Movement. There’s just one problem: As even JTO has to force himself to admit, there are more than a few homophobic dudes lurking around in the Men’s Rights movement. As JTO acknowledges:
[T]here is a thread of opinion with a growing currency among some MRAs which rejects the legitimacy of men whose self identity and sexuality is gay or bisexual, or I suppose, transsexual.
JTO doesn’t like this, and says so:
[There] are men (and women) whose sexuality, either chosen or not, doesn’t conform to an acceptable standard – and some within the MRM would demonize them. Gentlemen and ladies – this is nothing short of stupid.
At what point does who an individual finds sexually attractive diminish their value as a human? How is it that a man whose preference doesn’t include vagina becomes less of a man? Conversely, are we going to pretend the sexual preferences of our female colleagues matter in the context of partnership in the fight for the human rights of men and boys?
So: JohnTheOther has explicitly decided to speak up in favor of “the gay agenda.” (Yes, that’s the phrase he used.) And he’s even included lesbians in the deal – something allegedly pro-gay MRAs often have trouble doing – even though he sort of suggests at the end that he’s only willing to accept lesbians who are also MRAs.
But, hey, baby steps, right?
Well, John, if you really want to toss the homophobes out of the Men’s Rights movement, you’re going to have to start with A Voice for Men itself.
If you go to read JTO’s whole post over on AVFM, you’ll see a couple of “featured videos” in the sidebar from longtime AVFM friend and contributor Bernard Chapin. One of them bears the intriguing title “Feminist Professor Gloats Over Lesbian Chic.” The description, presumably written by AVFM head honcho Paul Elam, reads:
Bernard’s on a roll here with this one. And you will be rolling to [sic] as he delivers another thorough fisking, Inferno style.
Watch the video, here or there, or as much of it as you can stand. As you’ll see, it’s basically eight minutes of gratingly “humorous” lesbian bashing from good old Bern – whose preferred term for “lesbian,” incidentally, is “lesbobo.” (Evidently adding an extra “bo” to the old slur “lesbo” is hilarious.)
Chapin has produced more than 1200 videos; this is one of the two that AVFM has chosen to feature.
You want to stand up to homophobia, John? Take down that video. Apologize for hosting it. Apologize for featuring it. Demand that Chapin apologize for it — or kick him to the curb.
Meanwhile, AVFM is helping the guy behind the website Artistry Against Misandry publicize and raise money for an upcoming event; Elam himself says he’s already sent along a hundred dollars. Here are some examples of the sort of “artistry” that’s featured on the site:
This second graphic is not only homophobic but confused: Chaz Bono is a trans man, not a lesbian.
Speaking of transphobia, AAM also hosts several videos by “Creativebrother,” one of which is this not-hot transphobic mess:
John, I suggest you ask your boss at AVFM to get his money back from Artistry Against Misandry. Because, here’s the thing: if you actively support hate like this, people might just get the impression you’re a hate site.
EDITED TO ADD: In the comments, Elam proudly announces his own support of the “gay agenda” as well. Well, with 0.1% of it.
I don’t like most gay activists very much, and I oppose 99.9% of what passes as gay activism, but I don’t think it is very smart to forget that part of the reason they were led astray is because most “normal” men never gave them the dignity of being regarded as a man.
Forget gay marriage, forget bullying, forget AIDS: apparently the only real issue for gay men is evil feminist ladies calling them “fags” for not wanting to have sex with them.
Elam also has a most interesting explanation of homophobia, at least against gay men:
Gay men are bashed, when all is said and done, because they are not of utilitarian value to women, and because they are perceived as not having enough strength to be of utilitarian value to the elites.
Yeah, that’s probably it.
What about homophobia against lesbians? That’s easy: “lesbobos” are just naturally ugly and hilarious.
“Artisty Against Misandry” fights bigotry by declaring women to be “tapeworm parasites.” [UPDATED with more awful shit]
Many of those in the manosphere wear their misogyny like a badge of honor. Others like to present themselves as fierce opponents of bigotry, and angrily deny the charges of misogyny thrown their way. When the Southern Poverty Law Center ran an article noting the misogyny often found on A Voice for Men, for example, site founder Paul Elam responded with great indignation in an open letter to the group:
Yesterday I received the unfortunate news that your organization … listed my website, avoiceformen.com, among others, as misogynistic, or “woman-hating. … Contrary to what readers of your site may be led to believe, the goals of SPLC and AVfM are quite similar: We both work to identify groups who seek to oppress others, and inform the public of the inequities they would perpetuate.
This seems a strange argument for the man whose handle on YouTube is “The Happy Misogynist,” and who regularly writes posts filled with hair-curling hatred of women. It seems even stranger when you consider AVFM’s support of a site that frankly peddles hate – against women, “manginas,” gay men, lesbian, and trans folk.
I’m talking about the misleadingly named Artistry Against Misandry site. AAM and AVFM seem almost joined at the hip. AAM’s founder, musician Jade Michael, wrote and performed the theme song currently used on AVFM’s internet “radio show.” AVFM has returned the favor, promoting the site and helping raise money for it. Indeed, several days ago Elam himself proudly announced that he’d sent along $100 of his own money to help Michael fund an upcoming event.
The site describes itself as follows:
Welcome to the first pro-male artist activist network. Within these pages you will find music, poetry, prose, graphics, cartoons and additional links, all of which are here to bring attention to and counter misandry in Western society.
In practice, this means saying the worst shit about women you can possibly imagine. Oh, the “artists” also say terrible things about men who don’t hate women with fervor — you may recall the ridiculous caricature of me as a self-flagellating, woman-worshipping “mangina” at the end of this post from a couple of days ago.
But the “artists” whose work is featured on the site focus most of their venom on women. Let’s take a look at several graphics from Reality, one of the site’s most prolific contributors.
Yep, that’s right: “western women” are “the new tapeworm parasites.” Here are a couple more.
There are (literally) forty more where those came from, and they’re pretty much all as nasty and hateful as the ones I’ve featured here. I suggest you visit AAM’s graphic art page and scroll through the rest of Reality’s wares.
If you don’t have the patience for that, and since the app they use on AAM to display Reality’s artwork is a piece of crap, I’m just going to highlight some more of his clever anti-misandry slogans here in text form:
Women actually expect you to act like a traditional male. While they live like psychotic whores. Keep dreaming, bitch!
Guys, do you really want to know what she’s thinking? 100% pure shit.
[Picture of women pointing at the camera.] We get everything and do nothing for it. Now get back to work slave.. we can put you in jail or bankrupt you with just a pointed finger.
Remember, when a woman tells you she’s tired it’s the only time she’s actually telling you the truth because…being a raging petty psychotic bitch…while being virtually retarded…while having endless banal thoughts she considers “genius…” while making insane and constant ultimatums…IS absolutely EXHAUSTING!!
Meanwhile, an artist calling himself “Andy Man” declares in a graphic of his own:
This is the sort of “artistry” that A Voice for Men is actively supporting.
And they wonder why some might consider them part of a hate movement?
Artistry Against Misandry also features music, videos, and even poetry, all of it awful, in every sense of the word. I will take a look at some of this in future posts.
EDIT: I added one more Reality graphic and a bunch of his slogans in text form.
ShitRedditSays has an Art Attack
Oh, ShitRedditSays! Not only are SRSers fighting the good fight against bigotry and assyness and general shitlordery on Reddit, but they also manage to come up with some of the best and most hilarious faux-propaganda graphics you’re likely to run across online, many of which are gathered together on the SRS FArtistry tumblr blog.
SRS being a bit of a circlejerk, the graphics are mainly designed to amuse other SRSers, and are full of in-jokes and references to the ridiculous reputation SRS has amongst Redditors at large as being the home to humorless man-hating Dworkinite feminazis eager to oppress helpless Straight White Males. By pelting them with dildoes.
Here, for example, is a lovely drawing illustrating how many Redditors actually see the unending battle between SRS (represented here by surly angels armed with purple dildoes) and the upstanding free-speech defenders of Reddit.
Other SRS graphics play on old propaganda tropes:
Still others are just excuses to make in-jokes. (For some reason, SRSers like to refer to dogs as “dags.”)
It’s interesting to see the contrast between SRS FArt and the, er, art generated by MRAs online. Here, for example, is a graphic taken from the Artistry Against Misandry site, a collection of “art” and “music” and even “poetry” from angry, art-, music- and poetry-challenged MRAs. AAM is heavily promoted on A Voice for Men; heck, Paul Elam recently sent them $100 of his own (supporters’) money to fight the (allegedly) good fight.
This hilarious piece of WTFery, if you haven’t figured it out already, is evidently supposed to be a picture of me. Or possibly Michael Moore. Whoever it’s supposed to be, I cackled with glee when I first saw it yesterday. (For future reference, I don’t own either a baseball cap or that particular kind of flogger.)
I will be exploring the vast artistic richness (sarcasm) of Artistry Against Misandry in several upcoming posts.
And after that I will highlight some of the magnificent art (not sarcasm) produced by some of Man Boobz’ own.
In the meantime, enjoy this one last bit of SRS FArtistry, which might be suitable for desktop wallpaper:
The SPLC responds to MRAs critical of its report on the Men’s Rights movement [UPDATED w/ NEW LINKS]
Arthur Goldwag, the author of the SPLC’s recent report on hatred in the Men’s Rights movement, has now responded to some of the hysteria his article provoked amongst MRAs. As Goldwag notes, contrary to what most MRAs seemed to conclude from the report,
the SPLC did not label MRAs as members of a hate movement; nor did our article claim that the grievances they air on their websites – false rape accusations, ruinous divorce settlements and the like – are all without merit. But we didcall out specific examples of misogyny and the threat, overt or implicit, of violence.
Thomas James Ball, for example, who was hailed as a martyr on so many men’s rights forums, called for arson attacks on courthouses and police stations. The Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik wrote extensively about the evils of feminism. We included as much as we did about Register-Her.com because it is so intimidating to its targets, not all of whom are criminals. When Elam accused Vliet Tiptree, a pseudonymous contributor to RadFem Hub, of “calling for extermination of half the human race; the male half, that is,” he offered a cash reward for her real identity. The names and locations of several candidates were publically aired.
Goldwag also takes a look at some of the radical feminists that have become boogeywomen for so many MRAs, and deals with other MRA complaints.
If you’re a regular reader of Man Boobz you’ll want to read the whole thing.
The Men’s Rights subreddit has already linked to Goldwag’s article, which has provoked not only the predictable SPLC-bashing but also some criticism of A Voice for Men and Paul Elam.
Obviously Elam and other MRAs will respond to Goldwag’s latest as well. Post links in the comments below as you find them, and I’ll add them to this post.
EDITED TO ADD: And, right on schedule, AVfM responds to Goldwag’s response. It’s a John the Other post, so be prepared to read a lot of words saying not very much.
On his own blog, Goldwag responds to Mr. The Other.
Goldwag’s piece also got some criticism from the STFUfauxminists Tumblr blog for quoting a RadFem known for her transphobia.
I’ll add more links as I find them.
ETA 2: MORE LINKS
Happy Mother’s Day, the A Voice for Men way. (Note: Much worse than you’d think.)
Over on A Voice for Men, our dear friend Paul Elam has come up with an interesting new way to celebrate Mother’s Day – with what is essentially the longest, least funny, and most rage-filled “Yo Mama” joke ever. (Indeed, it’s so rage-filled I should probably put a Trigger Warning right about here.)
Elam starts off by addressing the mothers of the world, suggesting he’s got a “a socially conscious twist” on the traditional Mother’s Day celebrations. Mothers, he argues, should gather together the flowers they’ve been given by their loved ones and:
Place a bunch of daffodils at a dumpster near you, perhaps one in which one of you, or one of your kind, has tossed an unwanted baby, leaving it there to slowly die alone in a pile of trash.
Perhaps you could lay a single rose at the base of a bridge that has been used by a mother to throw her baby into an icy river. Perhaps you can lay it there with hands that have beaten or shaken a baby to death.
You probably didn’t see that coming, did you? He goes on.
Now perhaps some of you could place large, colorful arrangements at the abortion centers where women go to have children cut out and laid to rest in those colorful and attractive biohazard containers that are all the rage in the clinics. …
Maybe you can lay virtual flowers at your computers to honor all the children that you and your sisters have pimped out to pedophiles, or perhaps the blossoms could be placed in your child’s room, which also doubles as your preferred place to abuse your own.
Oh, but you say you haven’t done any of these things, and that abortion isn’t actually the same as infanticide? No matter. Elam has an answer for that:
This is not a request for some mothers, or a percentage of them, but all of you. In fact, you don’t even have to be a mother. If you have a vagina, the blood of all those children, who are abused far more at the hands of women than men, has stained your skin and caked around the cuticles of your fingers.
If you are a mother, particularly one of the many abusers, or just one that has remained silent as your sisters have beaten, choked, stabbed, burned, drowned, abused, neglected, dumped, tortured and otherwise done the unspeakable to the most defenseless among us, then I hope to see those flowers in your murderous hands, paying homage to those that have been unfortunate enough to be placed in your path. …
In Daffodils for Dumpsters the gash gets you in, and you don’t really have a choice.
You see, Elam has decided that we live in an era of “collective guilt,” and that the evil (straw) feminists who go around blaming all men for the actions of a few – through such dastardly things like rape awareness seminars – deserve to find themselves collectively blamed as well.
Except that Elam’s post goes well beyond an ill-conceived and ill-intentioned attempt at “turnabout is fair play.” This isn’t a piece of Swiftian satire. He actually believes all this hateful nonsense, and says as much:
Now, do I really mean all this? Yes. It is not that women deserve to be collectively regarded as child abusers and killers. Most aren’t. Most are actually very good to their children and can even be trusted with the children of others. But that truth is not what is important here.
What is important is the children, or the principle, or whatever other bullshit we make up to convince ourselves it is not about demonizing women when that is exactly what we are doing.
I have to confess I have no idea what he’s trying to say in the second paragraph here. Did he mean to say “men” instead of “women?” If so, this is an interesting little slip.
He continues:
The fact is that mothers are more dangerous than fathers where it concerns children. They always have been. It is only a few percentage points in that direction, but of course in a White Ribbon way, it is more than enough to justify pointing a finger at your entire sex and feeling superior as we watch you atone for the unspeakable acts of a minority.
So, suck it up ladies. If you knew about White Ribbon and said nothing to object to it; if in general you have remained silent or actively participated as the image of the male half of the population has been reduced to that of a depraved threat, the step up and get your flowers. You deserve every last petal, stem and thorn.
I imagine Elam chuckling a bit as he typed that final word.
And a happy Mother’s Day to you, too!
Oh, and if you found yourself wondering about that “White Ribbon” thing, Elam is evidently (as best I can figure it) referring either to the women who, during World War I, handed out white ribbons to men who didn’t enlist in the army. Or he’s referring to this contemporary campaign to fight violence against women. But I don’t live inside Elam’s head, so I’m not sure what he meant, or why he seems to think that all women would know about either campaign, much less have any responsibility for them.
NOTE: Elam is also celebrating Mother’s Day by suggesting I had something to do with creating Reddit’s appalling “beatingwomen” subreddit as part of a nefarious plot to make the Men’s Rights movement look even worse than it manages to do on its own.
You may notice that Elam presents no actual evidence to back up his claims. There is no such evidence, because Elam’s accusations are utterly and completely untrue.
I have nothing whatsoever to do with r/beatingwomen. Nothing. I don’t know anything about who created it, or what their aim was beyond laughing at pictures and videos of violence against women. As I’ve said before, it’s a vile place. I think Reddit should shut it down.
