Search Results for Paul elam
Internet Inactivism and the MRA Paradox
MRA in action
As I’ve pointed out before, the vast majority of Men’s Rights Activists aren’t really activists at all, if by “activists” you mean people who occasionally get off their asses and try to engage in political activity in the real world. As I put in in my piece for the Good Men Project on misogyny in the Men’s Rights movement,
Men’s rights activists aren’t much like any other activists I’ve ever run across. For one thing, for supposed activists they are almost completely inactive. Sure, they complain endlessly about things they see as terrible injustices against men. They just don’t do anything about them. While some of those who consider themselves fathers’ rights activists—a slightly different breed from your garden-variety MRAs—try to influence laws and legislatures, MRAs do little more than cultivate their resentments.
MRAs seem to be good at one thing, and one thing only: posting angry comments on websites, whether their own or on those of their many enemies – whether that’s on blogs like this one or in the comments section on various mainstream media sites they consider “misandrist.” (Actually: that’s not entirely fair – on a few occasions, MRAs have been moved to make threatening phone calls as well.) They don’t raise money for anything but their own web sites and their pet projects. They don’t organize demonstrations that involve more than a tiny handful of people. Like, for example, this one, involving one dude dressed like Batman who climbed up onto a highway sign:
Or this one, which involved a dude dressed up as Batman and a dude dressed up as Robin, climbing up on a bridge.
If your protests typically involve fewer people than, say, the line of people waiting to use the Redbox video rental kiosk outside your local supermarket on a Friday night, I think it’s safe to say that yours is not a mass movement, at least not yet.
Am I being unfair in demanding MRAs actually, literally,get off their asses before I consider them to be activists? Perhaps.
But, as it turns out, MRAs aren’t much good at sitting-on-your-ass activism either. Case in point: For quite some time – weeks? months? — MRA elder Paul Elam has been urging readers of his blog A Voice For Men to sign a petition to disbar a District Attorney he and other MRAs have decided is corrupt. But despite his repeated pleas to his readers to sign the thing, it has not yet garnered the required 1000 signatures, even though at least a few of his readers have talked about signing it more than once. [Edited to add: it has now gotten more than 1000 signaturesd.]
Today, this particular example of internet inactivism prompted Elam to lash out at his non-signing readers. Declaring himself “tired and frustrated” and “sick of this shit,” he once again begged his readers to sign. Then he went a step further, suggesting that he might limit commenting on his site to “activists that are contributing to this site in one way or another” as a way of encouraging activism and discouraging those who are “sucking up air and doing little else.”
I don’t think further exhortation on his part – or limiting the comments there to “real” activists only – is likely to make much difference. [Edited to add: Nagging a few more people to spend two minutes signing an online petition is one thing. Actually transforming them into real activists is another.] Elam is running up against the inherent paradox of Men’s Rights “activism” – the fact that most of those complaining the most about alleged injustices against men are not in fact interested in changing anything. Their “activism,” as it were, is little more than an excuse to wallow in their own bitterness, and to blame others for their own problems.
If MRAs really cared about domestic violence against men – as opposed to using the issue as a rhetorical weapon against feminists – they would be raising money and devoting their time to actually building shelters, like the (mostly) women who built the first shelters decades ago, and the (mostly) women who keep these shelters going today. If MRAs were really interested in stopping prison rape, instead of simply complaining about it, they’d be donating money to or working with the advocacy group Just Detention or other groups concerned about the treatment of prisoners. If they were really interested in helping those falsely accused of rape or other crimes, they’d be working with The Innocence Project or some other group fighting for the falsely accused or convicted. Or they would be starting real organizations of their own.
But that’s not, at heart, what the MRM is about. For all but a tiny handful of real activists, it’s not about changing the world. It’s about creating a space where men can kvetch and blame and cultivate their own sense of martyrdom. Actually trying to change the real world would involve , well, going out into the real world, a place where their assertions about the alleged oppression of men are seen as the nonsense they are, a place where their bitterness and hatred of women is seen as bitterness and hatred rather than the righteous anger they like to imagine that it is.
When MRAs do venture out of their self-created bubble they tend to either make fools of themselves – like Batman on the highway sign in the video above – or to reveal themselves to be the angry fanatics they are. Elam, for his part, sometimes even has trouble making his case in the relatively sympathetic environment of the Men’s Rights subreddit on Reddit, and is quickly reduced to sputtering rage when anyone disagrees with him. In the end, sputtering rage seems to be what the MRM is really all about.
>If you don’t agree with me, angry dudes will kick your ass
>
Anyone who’s seen Taxi Driver will remember Travis Bickle’s late night soliloquy on the “whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, [and] junkies” he saw every night driving his cab. “Someday,” he told himself, “a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.”
Of course — SPOILER ALERT! — what he really meant by “a real rain” coming was that he, Travis Bickle, would lose his shit and start shooting people.
Bickle wasn’t the only one to mix his predictions with a heaping helping of threat. Those who predict the end of the world at the hand of gods or men or some vague terrible cataclysm are all too often rooting (secretly or openly) for the civilization-destroyers they are ostensibly warning against. We saw this the other day amongst those MGTOWers who are now talking giddily about how complete economic collapse will serve to put foolish women and their “mangina” pals in their proper place.
And we see it again and again in the Men’s Rights movement, when MRAs sternly warn their detractors that if people don’t start listening to them, and pronto, the men of the world will rise up and, well, kick the shit out of everyone who opposes them. This is a warning only in the sense that a mafioso telling someone that, if he doesn’t pay what he owes, his legs just might possibly get broken, is a warning; by all reasonable definitions, it is a threat. As opposed to the leg-breaking, the threats of these MRAS aren’t very specific threats, but they’re threats of violence nonetheless.
I ran across one recent example of this sort of “warning” in the comments to Paul Elam’s piece on misandry — or at least what he labels misandry — in the Good Men Project’s package on the Men’s Rights movement. (My own contribution to the debate is here.) Here’s “Factory,” responding to another commenter who pointed out that some of his wording in an earlier comment had been awfully violent:
Who said I was interested in proving I wasn’t violent?
In point of fact, I continually warn people that if these issues are not MEANINGFULLY addressed, and soon, there will be a LOT of violence (see: Middle East) that we MRAs won’t be able to stop.
And frankly, if it comes to that, society (and all the women in it along with the men) flat out DESERVES whatever is coming.
Your hubris as a movement is causing a lot of men to be angry. You all vastly underestimate both the anger, and the ubiquitous nature of this anger.
We MRAs do nothing except act as weather vane and map. That’s why we have no central authority, or funding, or organization of any kind. We are average guys mad enough to stand up like we do. There are a LOT more guys that are just as mad, but content to let others lead.
And there are a growing number of men that take Feminist (and ‘official’) dismissal of mens issues as indication that ONLY violent revolution will lead to change.
And speaking for myself, if it ever comes to violence, I will stand aside, and feel bad while all manner of nasty things are done…but I won’t lift a FINGER to stop it.
Just like people like you are doing right now.
Notice the not-so-subtle, and rather thoroughly bungled, rhetorical sleight of hand here. Factory paints the violence as something he won’t indulge in (but won’t stop) — forgetting that in the very first sentence he admitted that he was himself violent. He refers to MRAs as little more than a “weather vane” for male emotion — but somehow later in the paragraph they are leading things. He claims that he will “feel bad while all manner of nasty things are done,” but this is only after stating in no uncertain terms that he thinks “society … flat out DESERVES whatever is coming.”
So, yeah, this is as much a “warning” as the hypothetical mafioso’s reference to broken legs.
Naturally, Elam himself stepped up to second Factory’s emotion, declaring that “[m]en, when disenfranchised and pushed to the edge, have frequently become violent.”
On his own site, Elam has been much more frankly threatening. Recently, telling off one commenter who had the temerity to actually question the gospel according to Elam, he finished off a long rant about male anger with this:
I would not suggest that treating half the population, the stronger half at that, with too much continuing disregard is a very good idea.
Thinking they will never come out swinging is a stupid, stupid way to go.
This kind of logic might best be called the Appeal to an Ass-kicking. The structure of this argument could be broken down as follows:
1) Source A says that p is true
2) If you don’t agree that p is true, Source A (or perhaps some other dudes) will do you bodily harm.
3) Therefore, you’d better fucking agree that p is true.
This is probably the oldest and crudest form of logic there is, and one that is popular amongst many animals as well. (My cat is a master of it, at least when p = “you will give me treats now.”)
Perhaps the best way to respond to it is the way that the commenter calling herself fannie responded to Factory on the Good Men Project:
You’re arguing that men are going to be so angry they’re not going to be able to control their rage and are therefore going to start inflicting mass amounts of violence upon others.
I’m not sure a feminist could be more defamatory of men than you are being.
MRAs sure are misandrist.
I, and feminists like me, think men are better than that.
Me too.
–
If you enjoyed this post, would you kindly* use the “Share This” or one of the other buttons below to share it on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or wherever else you want. I appreciate it.
*Yes, that was a Bioshock reference.
>Rocking Panda Says: Check out the Good Men Project today (and tomorrow)
>
The Good Men Project Magazine is running a bunch of articles on the Men’s Rights Movement this week. My contribution to the discussion, looking at misogyny in the Men’s Rights movement, will be going up tomorrow. But in the meantime, check out what they’ve got up now, including pieces from Amanda Marcotte, Hugo Schwyzer, and, at the other end of the spectrum, Paul Elam, who seems to be trying to tone it down a bit, at least for this audience. (More thoughts on that later.) Rocking panda will be waiting here for you when you get back.
>Shovel ready
>
 |
| The Ideal Woman, apparently. |
Freud asked: “What do women want?” Mel Gibson answered the question in that movie in which he could read their lady minds. I never saw it, but I’m guessing based on Gibson’s behavior since making the film that women want lots of drunken anti-Semitic tirades and verbal abuse.
Anyway, over at A Voice For Men, MRA elder Paul Elam doesn’t really give a shit about what women want. But he knows what they deserve, and what they don’t deserve. Which turns out to be shovels and love, respectively. As he explains in a recent comment:
We don’t need to teach young girls to marry for love; we need to put shovels in their hands and put them to work in ditches, digging their way to self sufficiency. We need to leave them to their own survival devices so that they can learn some humility …
But what we most need to teach young girls is that until there are social pressures established that place firm boundaries and limits on their hypergamous instincts, that they cannot be trusted with love, as women in this culture have been proving for 50 years … .
Keep shoveling, Paul.
–
If you enjoyed this post, would you kindly* use the “Share This” or one of the other buttons below to share it on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or wherever else you want. I appreciate it.
*Yes, that was a Bioshock reference.
Godwin’s Law, upside-down and backwards
>
Meet Stu. Stu hates feminsts. But he hates manginas even more. You might even say that Stu hates manginas the way Hitler hated Jews. No, I’m not comparing Stu to Hitler. He happily compares himself to Hitler in this comment on A Voice For Men.Phew, I’m glad you [Paul Elam] said feminist hating is an honorable and viable political act because I certainly hate them. … The real object of my hatred are those that enable these people. The ones that are actively engaged in creating the environment of misandry that we live in now.
For those people, career feminists and manginas, my hatred would be on par to Adolf Hitlers hatred of a super rich gay jew who was raping his arse. Out of these, I hate career manginas the most. There would be no mercy for these arseholes if I could be dictator for a day, they would soon be living what is left of their lives in extreme misery.
Emphasis added. This comment, Hitler and all, got more than three times as many upvotes as downvotes from the assembled mob site’s readers. Of course, Stu’s comment is in response to a post titled “The Scourge of Rape. Yeah, whatever,” which means that these upvoters are people who enjoyed a post titled “The Scourge of Rape. Yeah, whatever” so much that they stuck around afterwards to compliment the author, so, you know.
This, by contrast, is the sort of comment that gets downvoted on A Voice For Men, and which inspires the post’s author, Paul Elam, to tell the commenter “fuck that, and fuck you. Let me say that again. Fuck you.”
EDITED TO ADD: When I posted this piece last night, that second comment had virtually no upvotes; you had to click a link to even see it. I hope at least a few of the upvotes it now has were from the regulars on that site.
Another heartening sign: the critical response Elam’s “Rape … whatever” screed got on the Men’s Rights subreddit on Reddit. His response to the criticism is rather telling. I’m generally not a fan of the Men’s Rights subreddit, as you might imagine, but there are some decent people who comment there and it is much less hateful than almost all of the other MRA/MGTOW/etc sites I regularly read.
–
If you enjoyed this post, would you kindly* use the “Share This” or one of the other buttons below to share it on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or wherever else you want. I appreciate it.
*Yes, that was a Bioshock reference.
>Valentine’s Day, Massacred
>
Don’t let it be said that the dudes of the manosphere aren’t ready for Valentine’s Day. Oh, they haven’t been ordering little teddy bears and giant bouquets of flowers for their sweeties. They’ve been getting ready to throw a fit at the very notion of the ersatz holiday.
Marc Rudov, a self-described MRA, “relationship expert” and all-around asshole, has been trying to organize a boycott of VD for several years now. “There’s nothing romantic about coercing men to oblige female entitlement,” Rudov recently told AOL News. “Valentine’s Day artificially and unilaterally caters to women. It’s the media’s annual male-bashing fest.”
Over on The Spearhead, grizzled MRA veteran Zed has written not one but two articles attacking VD, which he describes as “Extortion of Insincere Materialistic Tokens of Affection Under Threat of Emotional Violence Day.” Meanwhile, Paul Elam — never one for subtlety — has one-upped old Zed, denouncing the holiday as “a socially coerced day of hyper-entitlement for a generation of princess leeches.” Endorsing Rudov’s boycott, Elam seems especially incensed by the omnipresent “Every Kiss Begins With Kay” ads that clutter the airwaves every year as VD approaches.
One commenter at The Spearhead summons up his inner comedian:
There’ two types of VD. One is a potentially serious affliction that can be caught from sexual relations with a woman. Symptoms include tiredness, lack of sex drive, acute pain in the groin region and loss of work productivity. It’s difficult to treat as the parasite responsible is very demanding and difficult to get rid of.
The other is a bacterial infection treatable with antibiotics and rest.
 |
| Marc Rudov: Trying to hypnotize you with his teeth. |
It’s almost cute, all this energy and anger. These guys seem to really think that they’re the first people to ever have an issue with Valentine’s day, the first people to ever get irritated by “every kiss begins with Kay.”
But, guess what? Lots of people hate Valentine’s day. I generally find it pretty annoying myself, and the Kay commercials, which basically suggest that the women of America are jewel-hungry prostitutes and the men their johns, set my teeth a-grinding. Granted, I’m generally been most hostile to VD when I’ve been single, but when a couple of years ago I discovered that my then-girlfriend was a really really really big fan of the holiday (and not a fan of my more laid-back approach to it) it was actually one of the things that led me to break up with her a few weeks later.
You know who else hates Valentine’s day and the blizzard of retrograde sexist advertising that accompanies it? Lots and lots of women, especially those of the feminist persuasion, who generally don’t take kindly to the insinuation that women are diamond whores. Indeed, a couple of weeks back, hundreds of the mostly women of Reddit’s TwoXChromosomes subreddit happily upvoted a topic with the title “If I see one more freakin’ “Every Kiss Begins with Kay” commercial I am going to find whoever is responsible for that nonsense and take a big fat poop on his face. “
Hell, Valentine’s Day hatred is everywhere. In the London Times, Helen McNutt — a woman, if her first name is any indication — spelled out “20 reasons it’s okay to hate Valentine’s Day.” Meanwhile, the Onion News Network ran a hilarious piece on the “Annual Valentine’s Day Stoning Of a Happy Couple .”
And if you want your VD hatred live and direct, you can always monitor Twitter for bitter anti-VD tweets.
Indeed, VD hatred has become so omnipresent that the folks at Slate, hoping to gin up some pageviews with some well-timed contrarianism, ran a piece — get this — actually defending the holiday. “I’m almost afraid to say it,” the piece began, “I have plans for Valentine’s Day. … If I’m lucky, there may even be chocolate and flowers involved.”
Like a lot of VD haters, I have plans for February 15th. They definitely involve chocolate, bought at a steep discount.
–
If you enjoyed this post, would you kindly* use the “Share This” or one of the other buttons below to share it on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or wherever else you want. I appreciate it.
*Yes, that was a Bioshock reference.
>Rapist babies and internet threats
>
 |
| How the hell did I get mixed up in all this? |
The manosphere is in an uproar about a public service TV ad from an anti-violence group that portrays a baby boy as a future rapist. Some MRAs are attempting to refute the ad’s implication that improperly socialized men are prone to violence by posting and upvoting … violent comments and veiled threats online. And apparently some non-veiled death threats as well.
A few days ago, you see, W.F. Price, head honcho at The Spearhead, wrote a critical piece about the endeavors of one Josh Jasper to draw attention to sexism in Super Bowl commercials; Price also pointed out that Jasper, CEO of the Riverview Center, a nonprofit serving domestic violence and sexual assault victims in Illinois and Iowa, had put out an earlier commercial that, in Price’s words, “impl[ied] that baby boys are all potential rapists.”
Despite the source, that’s actually a more or less accurate description of the ad, which depicts a happy little baby boy as a future rapist. I’m just not quite sure why that’s so objectionable; after all, every baby, male or female, is a bundle of possibilities, some good, some bad. (Hitler was once a happy, gurgling baby.) The point of the ad is that parents can have an effect on how their kids turn out; if you raise your son to be a violent, misogynist asshole, he may well end up a rapist.
As much as I agree with this basic sentiment, I’m not going to defend the ad. It’s terrible. Generally, I’m not a fan of using babies to make political points — it’s trite and manipulative, to begin with. And in this case, it’s worse than that: portraying a baby as a future rapist seems rather hamfisted, given that babies are often victims of abuse themselves.
Judge for yourself; here’s the ad.
All this said, the flaws of the “rapist baby” ad in no way excuse the response it’s gotten from some of the more hotheaded in the Men’s Rights Movement and the manosphere in general. On his website, Peter Nolan declares that the ad “promote[s] hatred of male babies”; on The Spearhead, Poester99 goes even further, accusing Riverview Center of “promoting violence against baby boys.” Which is, of course, completely absurd. (Even besides that, as Jasper has pointed out on his blog, the Riverview Center serves male victims as well as female ones.) It’s hard to know if the people spouting this nonsense honestly believe it, or if they are using the baby in the ad even more cynically and opportunistically than Jasper is.
Unfortunately, the MRA reaction has gone well beyond simple rhetorical overkill. A number of comments on The Spearhead, many of them with dozens of upvotes, are essentially threats — some vague, some not-so-vague — against Jasper himself. duke writes that:
Mangina creeps like Josh Jasper should suffer the same fate as Nazi sympathizers after WWII-taken out and shot after a five minute trial.
Avenger adds:
If men really were as violent as he claims they would have shut him up long ago. One good beating and this mangina would never open his mouth again.
Firepower, meanwhile, goes after Jasper’s … first name:
So long as males tolerate sissified males named “Josh” – pissing even on our SuperBowl – these gender traitors will only feel encouraged to increase their anti-male slurs.
Over on A Voice For Men, meanwhile, MRA elder Paul Elam insinuates that Jasper, far from being a sissy, is a violent “alpha puke” — and calls on his fans to dig up dirt on him:
This man deserves consequences for his actions.
Some history on Josh is known. We know he was a marine and we also know that he was a Los Angeles police officer. Two areas for sure where the capacity for violence is a plus. Add to that the fact that he was on a Domestic Violence task force and this bad apple starts to stink a little more. …
Anyone want to take any bets on whether this alpha puke ever busted heads as a cop, simply because he could? It leaves one to wonder – especially given the intellectual violence he is so obviously willing to inflict on male children – just what sort of skeletons are in this douche bag’s closet.
If they are there, I would love to get my hands on them and rattle them together for the world to hear.
And on Men-Factor, antifeminist blogger ScareCrow (who used to regularly post comments here) posts the email addresses of The Riverview Center’s mostly female board of directors, urging readers to “vent your anger” on this “bitch-hive,” adding “I aim to destroy it.”
I don’t have the patience or the stomach to sort through the comments on the YouTube page for the ad to see what other vile shit has been posted there.
I can only hope that most of this violent language is just standard internet tough guy talk, and won’t result in real violence in the real world. Even if you believe that Jasper’s ad commits a sort of rhetorical violence against male babies — which I think is a ridiculous reading of the admittedly idiotic ad — it does not justify actual violence against anybody.
EDIT: I should have let this one sit a little before putting it up. I’ve made various changes to strengthen and clarify my argument.
–
If you enjoyed this post, would you kindly* use the “Share This” or one of the other buttons below to share it on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or wherever else you want. I appreciate it.
*Yes, that was a Bioshock reference.
Women Are … Part 3: A Voice For Men edition
 |
| Britney, don’t you know YOU’RE toxic? |
More, uh, questionable wisdom from angry dudes on the nature of women. Today: comments from A Voice For Men. I’ve highlighted some of the nastiest stuff for easy reference.
Women: Deserve to be shot in the face.
Women are the natural enemies of men. No matter what anyone says and how good women claim to be, that is just the truth. This will never stop and men will continue under the tyranny of women. … We are called rapists, abusers, bullies, and even homophobes because we don’t embrace the faggots biologically backward, queer-ass culture. … I am so fucking tired of this shit, that I really wouldn’t mind shooting a bitch dead in the face. … They are evil. ALL OF THEM!!! … This is a gender war, and women, ALL WOMEN! are the enemies, there is no compromising.
(Note: This comment, even with the whole shooting-women-in-the-face bit, got more upvotes than downvotes from A Voice For Men’s peanut gallery, and “redpill” was not taken to task for actually suggesting murder by the site’s owner, Paul Elam. Lots of other crazy stuff in that comment thread.)
EDITED TO ADD: Elam has now removed this comment, which he says he hadn’t seen before, saying “I am vehemently against violence.” Given that he has posted similarly violent fantasies several times in his own pieces, this is a little difficult to take altogether seriously. (My link is to the version of the page saved on the Internet Archive, which still contains the comment intact.) He claims those other pieces were “satire” and that the violent parts were “taken out of context.” Of course, none of this changes the fact that a comment about “shooting a bitch dead in the face” got more upvotes than downvotes on his site. (Here, by contrast, is a comment that got massive downvotes on his site; you’ll have to click a link there to even make the comment visible.) EDITED AGAIN TO ADD: In this post, I take apart Paul’s claim that he’s being satirical when he talks about violence.
Women are: Toxic, but their vaginas are useful.
Women are toxic – stay away from them, dont be around them for too long and most importantly when pumping them with man juice wear protection so you dont get infected with child support.
Until women regress back into their maternal/house keeping roles use them for the only thing they have to offer to a straight man – their vaginas.
Women are: Malleable, gullible, stupid, bad, irrational, and ridiculous.
In my opinion women are malleable,gullible and lack vision.The statements they make are ludicrous,they are therefore stupid, driven on by one thing and one thing only-their sexual power. The day someone creates a pill that desexualizes them in our eyes, then that is it. It is over. I don’t for a single second believe that the nature of women has transformed over the ages. Go back in time and the same nonsense will be as visible then as it is now. … women are this way by nature. The good thing is,they have demonstrated, to their everlasting detriment, just how bad, irrational, and ridiculous they really are. Time to stop pandering.
Women are: Crazy, undisciplined, irresponsible, toxic, entitled, and they’ll probably get your penis infected.
[W]omen in this country my age and younger are out of their minds! They have no concept of discipline or responsibility. They can talk with the best of them but their actions paint an entirely different picture. It’s not going to an extreme to want to get away from Western women entirely. They are toxic human beings. It is dangerous physically (many of them have STD’s), economically (look at hulk hogan’s ex and her new yacht the alimoney), religiously (these girls are some of the MOST entitled I have seen), etc.. Even the best of them slip into the entitled mentality far too frequently.
>Further Reading: The Worst of the Men’s Rights Movement
>
 |
| From Paul Elam’s site. |
Here are links to, and brief excerpts of, some of the worst posts by Men’s Rights activists and/or antifeminists I’ve run across in doing this blog. These are not random comments by random MRAs; they are all by people who have a history in the MRM. In most cases, they are fairly prominent names, at least within the online MRA community. A few of these posts will be familiar to readers of this blog.
Lest anyone accuse me of taking quotes out of context, I urge you to read the originals. As you’ll see, none of these quotes are any more justifiable “in context” than they are here on their own.
If anyone out there has seen worse, please post a URL below. Conversely, if any of these posts have been publicly challenged by others in the MRM, I will happily post links alongside the original.
I am also taking nominations for a follow-up post, The Best of the MRM. Post URLs below.
Let’s start with Paul Elam’s charming “Bash A Violent Bitch Month” Post
The money quote:
In the name of equality and fairness, I am proclaiming October to be Bash a Violent Bitch Month.
I’d like to make it the objective for the remainder of this month, and all the Octobers that follow, for men who are being attacked and physically abused by women – to beat the living shit out of them. I don’t mean subdue them, or deliver an open handed pop on the face to get them to settle down. I mean literally to grab them by the hair and smack their face against the wall till the smugness of beating on someone because you know they won’t fight back drains from their nose with a few million red corpuscles.
And then make them clean up the mess.
Immediately after this quote, he claims he’s not “serious” about this, though apparently only because “it isn’t worth the time behind bars or the abuse of anger management training that men must endure if they are uppity enough to defend themselves from female attackers.” My post on the subject is here. Here’s another piece by Elam full of fantasies of violence against women.
Another by Elam: Jury Duty at a Rape Trial? Acquit!
Key quote:
Should I be called to sit on a jury for a rape trial, I vow publicly to vote not guilty, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true.
This post from Roy Den Hollander, a lawyer and Men’s Rights activist best known for suing clubs that have “ladies nights,” suggests that men may have to take up arms to win their, er, struggle:
The future prospect of the Men’s Movement raising enough money to exercise some influence in America is unlikely. But there is one remaining source of power in which men still have a near monopoly—firearms.
I wrote about Hollander’s call to arms in If at first you don’t succeed, shoot people.
And speaking of angry men and their guns, here’s a post from Citizen Renegade, a Pick-Up Artist (PUA) site popular with MRAs: Game Can Save Lives It’s about George Sodini, the misogynist killer who gunned down women at a health club a year ago. “Chateau” suggests that all would have been well if Sodini had learned how to be a Pick-Up Artist:
If Sodini had learned game he would have been able to find another woman and gotten laid after his ex dumped him. He wouldn’t have spent the next 20 years steeped in bile and weighed down by his Sisyphian blue balls, dreaming of vengeance. Game could have saved the lives of the women Sodini killed.
Actually, Sodini had taken at least one class from Don Steele, author of “How to Date Young Women for Men Over 35.” The comments to Chateau’s article are scarier than the article itself. For selected examples and commentary, see here.
Another from Citizen Renegade: Owning a Dog is Training for Owning a Woman
[P]roperly owning a dog is excellent training for properly owning a woman. The behavior of dogs and women is eerily similar, and their relation to man testifies to that.Like dogs, women need to be led. They *want* to be led. In fact, though they will never admit it, women want to be owned by their men.
Other MRAs don’t seem to be much interested in adult women at all. MRA Jay Hammers, a regular contributor to The Spearhead, has taken down his blog, but its worst moments live on in Google’s cache. Perhaps the worst of the worst: Age of Consent is Misandry. Key quotes:
Age of consent laws are designed to punish beta males. A beta male in his 20s, unsuccessful with women his own age who are infused with a sense of feminist entitlement and deride all but the top alpha males who take interest in them, who seeks companionship with a younger, sexually mature female who desires him, should not go to prison for acting on that which is normal male sexuality.Females generally do not significantly mature mentally past puberty so it should always be illegal for any woman to have sex or it should never be illegal for any woman to have sex. There is no arbitrary age where females suddenly become self-aware, realizing the consequences of their actions, and stop seeking out alpha males. Thus there must not be an arbitrary age of consent for sex.
This post did get some criticism in the MRM. Here’s one discussion.
And here’s Hammers again, accusing other MRAs of being “pansies.”
One of Hammers’ biggest defenders has been an antifeminist blogger by the nom-de-net of Schopenbecq, who is equally obsessed with the age of consent and what he sees as the superior attractiveness of teen girls. Here’s one of his posts on the subject, which argues:
The age of consent has always been central to feminism. In fact, it has been its primary driving force right from the beginning. The purpose of this website is not to campaign for a reduction in the age of consent from the present feminist age of 16. For one thing, there is little or no chance of that happening in this author’s lifetime. However, I have no shame whatsoever in stating my clear belief that the age of consent ought to be what it still technically is in the majority of major civilised nations – namely, 14.
In this post, he mocks any man who doesn’t think Heather Locklear’s 13-year-old daughter is hotter than Locklear herself:
 |
| Results of a poll on Schopenbecq’s site. |
Here, he argues that feminism is a “Sexual Trade Union,” and seems to suggest that increasing the age of consent from 12 was bad thing :
Feminism exists as a defender of the selfish sexual and reproductive interests of aging and/or unattractive women. This is its entire raison d’etre, the reason it first came into existence with the social purity movement reformers of the 19th century, led by their harridan battle cry – ‘armed with the ballot the mothers of America will legislate morality’.And legislate morality these pioneering feminists quickly did, even before they had won the vote. That is, they successfully lobbied for restrictions on prostitution, a rise in the age of consent from 12 to 16, or even 18, and the closing down of saloons where their husbands might mix freely with unattached young women.
More misogyny:
Anglobitch: Women, Self Awareness and the Guillotine of Bitterness
Post-feminist women have been so indoctrinated by specious polemics extolling their (largely imaginary) talents, that they truly believe their ‘achievements’ are somehow self-determined. This is why the loss of their physical charms wreaks such havok on them. Having been nurtured on feminist pipe dreams, the cutting realization that their youthful ‘success’ was entirely due to sexual allure must be galling indeed. … Indeed, the staunch bitterness of middle-aged Anglo-American women can be entirely attributed to this realization:It wasn’t your ‘talent’ and ‘intelligence’ that men admired: it was your sweet young pussy. That pussy-pass departed with your first wrinkle: live with it, bitch.
Heretical Sex: Never Date Western Women
Big cities like London, New York and Sydney are jam-packed with beautiful foreign girls from Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia. They are sexy, fun, good company and they treat men like human beings. They have not had their minds poisoned by feminist hate-speech. … I urge all Western men to boycott Western Women if they can. Don’t date them, don’t marry them, don’t have children with them. Find yourself a nice foreign girl, and find out what women should be like. If anyone asks you why, tell them it is a protest against feminist ideology. Once enough men start boycotting them, women will turn away from feminism.
Henry Makow has gotten too loopy for most Men’s Rights activists to consider him as one of their own. But he remains one of the internet’s most influential antifeminists. Here are some quotes from his classic in craziness How the Rockefellers Re-Engineered Women.
Feminism is an excellent example of how the Rockefeller mega cartel uses the awesome power of the mass media (i.e. propaganda.) to control society. … Nicholas Rockefeller told [producer Aaron Russo] that his family foundation created women’s liberation using mass media control as part of a long-term plan to enslave humanity. ….The hidden goal of feminism is to destroy the family, which interferes with state brainwashing of the young. Side benefits include depopulation and widening the tax base. Displacing men in the role of providers also destabilizes the family.
Only satanists would trash motherhood.
The fellows at the Manhood Academy have also gotten a lot of criticism from MRAs. It’s not altogether clear why, since their ridiculously retrograde views of women are no more ridiculously retrograde than many of those I’ve quoted above. The key Manhood Academy text is a 135-page pdf called The Principles of Social Competence, which is full of stuff like this:
While women and children often lack the capacity to grasp the inner workings of authority, they still have an instinctual, positive response to it. Authority brings chaotic, aimless things, people, events and circumstances into a state of good order. … Masculinity is properly expressed in the form of authority.
You know what I said above about reading the originals? Don’t bother in this case.
Speaking of women as children, who could forget this classic, from “ramzpaul” on The Spearhead: How Female Suffrage Destroyed Western Civilization, which posited:
Single mothers, rampant divorce, abortion and falling birth rates are part of the cancer that is destroying what is left of Western Civilization. But very few people (even conservatives) fail to realize that the inception of this cancer can be found in the passage of the 19th amendment.
I wrote about the piece, and reactions to it, here.
More Worst Of links to come! The Men’s Rights movement produces fresh awfulness each and every day.
EDIT: Deansdale’s Blog has weighed in on this Worst-of list and is surprisingly positive about the whole thing. Oh, not my post — he hates my post, and me — but the original MRA-n-pals posts. Elam’s “Bash a Violent Bitch” post? “What’s the problem with this article? Nothing, really. … Elam has some insightful observations about the nature of women in our contemporary cultures.” Roissy’s post about misogynist killer George Sodini? “What’s wrong with this article? Nothing.”And RamZpaul’s How Female Suffrage Destroyed Western Civilization? “There are valid arguments supporting his claim. It’s not PC, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s automatically wrong.”
He even sort-of defends good old Henry Makow and his bizarre conspiracy theoryies:
Actually this is not so crazy. You don’t believe it, that’s fine, but show me why this is soooo unacceptable. He states lots of things: some of them obvious, some of them researchable. But it’s not so radical.
The only people he doesn’t defend? The Manhood Academy guys. Apparently saying horrible, horrible shit about women is perfectly acceptable in Deansdale’s vision of the MRM, but saying horrible, horrible shit about women while also calling other MRAs “manginas,” as the Manhood Academy guys do, is totally BEYOND THE PALE!!!
>Debate Drama: Dalrock is a Lying Liar
>
Debating Men’s Rights Activists can be a lot like arguing with a kid who puts his hands over his ears and shouts “la la la I can’t hear you!”
During my abortive debate with Paul Elam on Domestic Violence, I had a hard time getting him to respond to my arguments; instead, he devoted much of his energy to arguing against experts I never cited and arguments I never made.(EDIT: See all my debate posts and some commentary here.)
Now the blogger “Dalrock” has decided to weigh in on the debate — despite the fact that by his own admission he didn’t actually read the whole thing. Not surprisingly, he completely misrepresents my argument:
His argument was that since he could point to more studies showing the orthodox feminist view, his perspective must be right.
Either he didn’t read more than a paragraph or two of what I wrote, or he’s incapable of understanding logic, or, well, he’s a lying liar.
At the moment I’m leaning towards the first explanation; I’m being generous here.
But it’s hard to see the next bit as anything but, well, that lying liar thing.
Mentioning my post responding to Elam’s disgraceful “Bash a Violent Bitch Month” post, which was not even part of the debate proper, Dalrock ignores Elam’s obnoxious provocation and brings up a similarly obnoxious, similarly disgraceful Jezebel post from several years back, in which several Jezebel staffers and a host of commenters there gleefully admitted to beating up boyfriends. (Elam and I both mentioned it in our posts; it was Elam’s excuse for writing his post in the first place.)
According to Dalrock, my response to the Jezebel post went roughly as follows:
The feminist looked like he might come to just in time to avoid the count. He started mumbling incoherently that the link didn’t prove anything, and there weren’t that many women eagerly recounting tales of abusing their boyfriends. Besides, the women were probably lying and had really just been defending themselves. And none of the comments looked that bad to him anyway. Most of those guys probably eventually recovered with proper medical treatment.
Even aside from the dopey boxing metaphor, this is simply fiction. Let’s break it down.
He started mumbling incoherently that the link didn’t prove anything, and there weren’t that many women eagerly recounting tales of abusing their boyfriends.
I didn’t say that.
Besides, the women were probably lying and had really just been defending themselves.
I didn’t say that.
And none of the comments looked that bad to him anyway. Most of those guys probably eventually recovered with proper medical treatment.
I didn’t say that. He’s simply making shit up. Or, as some might put it, lying.
If you want to know what I did say, you can see it here.
When I pointed all this out in Dalrock’s comments, he responded with:
You mean you weren’t really unconscious in a boxing ring knocked out by a commenter, and came to just before the final count?
Yeah, the fact that you made a dumb boxing joke means it’s totally ok to lie about what I said.
To my regular readers: Sorry about all the drama here. To paraphrase Bob Dole, I’m just trying to get these guys to “stop lying about my record.”
Also: Elam himself poked his head up in the comments to Dalrock’s post to offer a response of sorts to my final debate post; needless to say, it’s pretty feeble. You can read it here, and if you skip down a few posts you should be able to read my response to it; I will also be appending it to my original post.
