Search Results for elam
A Voice for Men: we’ll support women in combat only if the proper percentage of women get killed.
Woman officially not in combat role.
As everyone reading this blog no doubt already knows, feminists have hailed the Pentagon’s decision to open combat jobs to women, which will allow women the same opportunities to serve as men. The decision is also a backhanded acknowledgement that, for all intents and purposes, women are serving in combat today already. (Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth lost both of her legs in combat in Iraq – but officially, what she was engaged in wasn’t combat.)
2012: Year of Triumphs for the Men’s Rights Movement
Come early to get a good seat!
What a year!
The Men’s Rights movement, the most important human rights movement of the 21st century, got 2012 off to a flying start in February with an event in Bozeman, Montana that was quite literally attended by no one. After that, the year was a whirlwind of activity. Let’s go to the timeline:
Battle of the Banned (Man Boobz trolls)
Miniskirted cyclists prepare to oppress men with their legs.
Feeling nostalgic for some of the Man Boobz trolls of yore? Well, head over to the Men’s Rights subreddit, where two of the greats most terrible are having a battle of wits. It all started when Man Boobz Troll of the Year 2011 NWOslave offered his opinions in a thread discussing Swaziland’s recent banning of “rape-provoking” miniskirts.
Homophobic Asshole Throws Other Homophobic Asshole Out of Men’s Rights Movement for Homophobic Assholery
Another big fight in the manosphere!
I don’t want to make this blog the A Voice for Men Show, but that little hangout of angry dudes has really been outdoing itself in recent days. Take site founder and chief egomaniac Paul Elam’s post the other day reading the riot act to another Men’s Rights activist for being a homophobic asshole.
Specifically, an Australian bloke named Chris Key, whom Elam describes as “a true misogynist, homophobe and all around asshole who claims to be an MRA.”
Register-Her was a Fake “Offenders Registry” Run By Misogynists, Designed to Vilify and Intimidate Women
Register-Her accused Katherine Heigl of being a man-hating bigot who “endorse[s] male targeted sexual mutilation” because she appeared in a Funny or Die video.
NOTE: As of April 4, 2014, the original site and its individual profiles have been taken down; a new site with an apparently similar purpose is evidently being built to replace it, but it’s not yet functional. You can see an archived version of the site’s main page, and its list of “bigots” using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, though you’ll need to manually edit the URLs of the “bigots” listed to see the archived profiles. (Replace each %20 in the URLs with an _ .)
Some of the women profiled on the site as “bigots” included:
Actress Katherine Heigl, who was put on the site after making a humorous public service announcement for the site Funny or Die promoting the spaying and neutering of pets. Register-Her charges her with “endors[ing] male targeted sexual mutilation.”
Feminist blogger Jessica Valenti, the author, most recently, of “Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness,” who was put on the site for several newspaper columns that the site misrepresents in an attempt to show that she is guilty of “an ongoing pattern of anti-male bigotry and advocacy for the eradication of constitutional rights based primarily on sex.” A Voice for Men has also labeled Valenti a “child abuser” for supporting feminist causes, and on one occasion posted candid photos it claimed were of her in an attempt to cause her embarrassment. If you look at the archived version of the site’s main page, you will see a picture of Valenti alongside photos of convicted rapists and murderers, all underneath the headline “Why Aren’t These Women In Prison?” Valenti has not, of course, committed any crimes.
A number of young women who attended a protest against Men’s Rights icon Warren Farrell at the University of Toronto. Register-Her used Twitter Tweets from some of the women, clearly intended as jokes, as evidence of genocidal intentions towards men. In an article on A Voice for Men, an anonymous writer even attacked one of these women for Tweeting a picture of a poster which declared “it is important to have someone’s consent before sexual activity.”
Site founder Paul Elam and other writers on A Voice for Men make no bones about their desire to ruin the lives of their foes. Indeed, the site’s much-referenced slogan is “Fuck Their Shit Up.”
In one post, Elam warned one critic of Register-Her that:
I find you, as a feminist, to be a loathsome, vile piece of human garbage. I find you so pernicious and repugnant that the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection. …
[Y]ou fucking moron. Your only real hope is to keep your mouth shut and pretend AVfM and register-her.com does not exist for as long as you can. Because, as you can see right now, anything you say or do will be thrown back in your face like holy water on a vampire.
We are coming for you, and we are coming for all the liars out there that have been ruining people’s lives with impunity. …
You are SO fucked.
Register-Her was clearly a major part of Elam’s program to “Fuck Their Shit Up.” The “registry” was heavily promoted on A Voice for Men, which linked to a number of “featured offenders” in its sidebar – all of them so-called “bigots,” none of them the criminals that Register-Her claims to really be about. A banner ad for Register-Her depicts a bloody knife. The tagline: “TRUTH is the real bitch.”
Elam’s idea of exposing the “truth” seems to involve publishing photographs and the personal information of his targets, whether these are alleged “false accusers” or simply feminists who have offended him. On the A Voice for Men internet radio show, Elam promised that:
If Mary Jane Rottencrotch out there wants to say that her husband beat her just for the sake of gaining leverage in a divorce he will now have a resource where he can come and post your name, your picture, your work telephone number, your address, perhaps even your route you take to get to work, if you bother to have a job.
While Elam has yet to make good on the threat of posting information on women’s routes to work, posts on A Voice for Men promoting the profiles of so-called “bigots” are filled with threatening language and vague intimations that further information will be revealed. In a post announcing the site’s campaign against the University of Toronto protestors, Elam wrote this about one of his targets:
We have her image and know her general location. We will identify her and profile her activity and name for public view.
We will not stop there, or just with her. And while we will not publish our complete intent, we are dogged in our efforts. …
We have no more sympathy for your agenda of hatred and exclusion than for a plantation owner’s rationale in the Antebellum South for justified ownership of another human being.
A Voice for Men’s posts about the targeted women are also filled with bizarre and hyperbolic accusations. In a post about a college student who had jokingly Tweeted that her “political position” was “kill all men hail satan,” and who in another tweet suggested she might get a tattoo reading “misandry,” one of A Voice for Men’s many pseudonynmous “agents” wrote:
She doesn’t just hate men; doesn’t just want them dead or silenced or marginalized or ignored. She at least entertains the idea of permanently marking her skin with that hatred, like a convict signaling gang affiliation.
“Agent Mauve” makes clear that he hopes to ruin the life of the young woman by putting her on Register-Her:
[T]his will be the beginning of [name removed]’s real legacy; where she can revel in the full and permanent notice of her deeds, and the lesson she is providing to the world about the nature of feminism, and the etiology of hatred. And so that anyone who ever does an internet search on her name again will be aware of it.
So far, A Voice for Men’s campaign against the Toronto protesters seems to be having what one can only assume is the desired effect. On A Voice for Men’s Facebook page, a commenter refers to one of the protesters as an “evil twisted little piece of dogshit,” adding: “I hope she suffers a fatal injury before she can go out and ruin peoples’ lives like she seems determined to do.” This comment earned several “likes” from A Voice for Men’s readers.
In the Spring of 2012, Register-Her was profiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that tracks hate groups, as part of a larger feature on the so-called “Men’s Rights” movement. Writing in the SPLC’s Intelligence Report, Arthur Goldwag described Register-Her’s modus operandus and its effect on one targeted woman:
Elam’s site can be frightening to its targets. In one case, he offered a cash reward to the first reader to ferret out a pseudonymous feminist blogger’s real name. In another, Elam singled out a part-time blogger at ChicagoNow who describes herself as a “vegetarian park activist with two baby girls.” The woman’s mistake was to write about her discomfort with male adults helping female toddlers in the bathroom at her daughter’s preschool. The blogger conceded that she was being sexist, but wrote that “I’d rather be wrong than find out if I’m right.”
After the woman was listed, she was widely attacked on men’s movement sites. “I don’t always use the word ‘cunt’ to describe a woman,” one poster raged, “but when I do it’s because of reasons like these.” Shocked, the “Mommy blogger” took down her original post and apologized for her “demonization of men.”
It wasn’t enough. “You targeted fathers, and just fathers,” Elam rebuked her. “It strikes me that you have never really been held to account for any of your actions in life. It is quite likely that the concept of complete, selfless accountability is just completely foreign to you.” Over at the Reddit Mens Rights forum, another poster fumed: “This entire episode should be a warning to all those male hating feminists out there who believe that they are safe screaming their hate messages on the web. Finally, they are held accountable for their hate messages and finally the rest of the world will find out exactly what type of depraved people they really are.”
That’s hate, and that’s precisely the sort of reaction Register-Her seems designed to provoke.
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I encourage readers to link to this piece on their websites, so as to make sure that people understand what Register-Her was really all about.
[TRIGGER WARNING; UPDATED] A Voice for Men commenter claims that the Newtown shooting is evidence of the oppression of men
Men’s Rights activists and others in the manosphere often complain that it’s unfair to link their movement to killers like the virulent antifeminist mass murderers Marc Lepine and Anders Breivik, even though the antifeminist, anti-woman ideology of these killers is oftem indistinguishable from MRA thought.
But the plain fact is that they make the links themselves. Whenever there is some sort of mass killing by someone who is driven at least in part by the hatred of women, it seems like it’s only a matter of time before some MRA steps up to, if not explicitly endorse the killer, at least suggest some sort of sympathy or empathy with him and/or to suggest that the killing in some way is an understandable or justifiable or even praiseworthy reaction to the the alleged oppression of men.
This time it seems to have happened with record speed. Over on the A Voice for Men forum, one commenter, GregA, compares the mass killer in Newtown today — whose motives are still completely unknown — with oppressed people rising up against tyranny in the Middle East:
So far the only reply he’s gotten challenges this odious comparison, so that’s a tiny bit comforting.
Naturally, the MRAs will say that this commenter is some sort of feminist troll. But he’s made dozens of comments on the AVFM forums that are standard-issue MRA stuff – he seems to be a bit obsessed with the notion that feminist commenters online are being paid for commenting – and his comments in the past (at least those that I looked at) seem to have been generally well-received there.
EDITED TO ADD: If you would like to discuss the Newton shootings without having to think about this horrible comment of GregA’s, I’ve set up a separate no-trolls, no MRAs, thread for that.
EDITED TO ADD MORE: Meanwhile, over on A Voice for Men itself, one of the first commenters in a thread on the subject blames the shootings on, you guessed it, misandry:
Meanwhile, AVFM “managing editor” Dean Esmay complains that feminists “will find some way or other to blame us in specific for this.” In case Esmay is reading this, I am not blaming the Men’s Rights movement for this shooting, mainly because we have absolutely no idea what motivated the shooter. What I am doing is pointing out that someone on AVFM’s own forum, someone who has previously posted there extensively, is comparing this murderer of children to some kind of freedom fighter, and another in the very thread you are posting in has decided (based on absolutely nothing) that “misandry” is to blame.
You may also recall the numerous comments from MRAs justifying or at least excusing, the Seal Beach shooter.
Here are some more MRA comments on the Seal Beach murders which I chose not to post at the time. These are from A Voice for Men. (In the original thread they weren’t next to one another; there’s more horrible stuff in the thread besides these two comments.)
Are these guys “feminist trolls?” No. They are both long-time commenters at AVFM.
But again, pointing out these horrible comments is not the same as blaming the MRM for that shooting, or for the shooting today.
In the case of Lepine and Breivik, people linked them to MRAs because they had (or in the case of Breivik still has) virulently anti-feminist worldviews virtually identical with much of the stuff posted regularly on Men’s Rights sites, and other “manosphere” sties generally.
Presumably we will learn more about this shooter’s motivations, and then we can decide if anyone besides the shooter himself is to blame.
EDITED TO ADD ONCE MORE: Elam has now shut down the thread on A Voice for Men; as I write this the thread on the A Voice for Men forum is still up. I suggest you take a look at it and make screenshots. Elam says it’s because I’m “using comments from the thread in order to push his lies.” It’s not clear how quoting his followers (in full, without edits) is a “lie.” Apparently he’s unwilling to let his followers continue to post comments because, we can only assume, he knows they will say more horrific things, and people outside the AVFM cult might see what those inside it actually think.
Not, at this point, that there’s much doubt about what they think.
EDITED TO ADD STILL MORE: Meanwhile, over on The Spearhead:
As most of the readers here will know, the shooter was 20 years old, wasn’t a father and the shooting had nothing to do with any custody battle.
MRA Videoblogger JohnTheOther, Hypocritical Defender of Doxxing, Doxxes Himself
This guy, who enjoys outing anonymous college students and making videos featuring his own endlessly talking head, wishes to remain anonymous.
Some months back, I made a post in which I referred to the mysterious JohnTheOther by his real name. I didn’t think this was a big deal, since John — whom regular readers know as the number two man at Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men – had previously used his real name, and linked it to his online pseudonym, in various writings of his and on YouTube. But he asked me to remove his name from Man Boobz because, he said, he was being harassed. So, out of courtesy to him, I did.
Now, frankly, JohnTheOther is making me feel like he played me for a sucker, and is making me wonder why I continue to pay him this courtesy.
The Stuff I Ban: Chris Key of Men’s Rights Online complains about “feminazi dykes and c***ts” using foul language.
Chris, enough! I’m trying to sleep here.
Here at Man Boobz, I’ve set it so first-time commenters have their comments sent to moderation so I can decide if they’re sort of people I want to have commenting here on a regular basis. Given the obnoxiousness of some of the people I let through, I imagine some of you might wonder just what it takes to get censored around here. So here, as a public service of sorts, is one recent comment from a first-timer that I didn’t let through.
JohnTheOther of A Voice for Men Seems to be Completely Losing Touch With Reality
The imaginary feminist conspiracy plots against JohnTheOther
I am beginning to wonder – seriously wonder — if JohnTheOther of A Voice for Men has completely lost touch with reality.
Take a look at this angry, delusional tirade he posted on Reddit yesterday after a couple of his AVFM comrades were banned from Reddit, possibly for their promotion of “doxxing” – that is, their attempts to find and reveal the personal information of a Toronto feminist activist. In this embarrassing public meltdown, JtO turned on the regulars in the Men’s Rights subreddit for criticizing AVFM’s doxxing campaigns – and accused them, astonishingly, of being a gang of closet feminists.
A Voice for Men’s Attempts to Find and Publicize the Personal Information of a Toronto Activist Could Threaten That Young Woman’s Safety
[TRIGGER WARNING: RAPE THREATS]
The Men’s Rights movement has been described by some as “the abusers’ lobby.” I don’t think that’s fair, but there are certainly those within the movement that fit the bill – not necessarily because they themselves are abusers, but because, among other things, they lionize abusers and advocate on their behalf.
In the case of hate site A Voice for Men, there is another way in which the term applies: the “activism” of the site and its followers, insofar as it consists of anything more than self-promotion, often mirrors the actions of abusers – AVFM is known for harassing individuals, usually women, and exposing (or threatening to expose) personal information that could be used to stalk and harm them, in an attempt to intimidate them and other feminists and shut them up. Indeed, the site on several occasions has offered $1000 “bounties” on the personal information of its foes.
