Search Results for elam
“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!
Point out sexism in video games, get called a cunt. Thanks, gamers!
Many of you are no doubt aware of this already, but I just wanted to highlight a recent appalling example of the rampant misogyny in the gaming community online: the harassment that feminist pop culture analyst and video blogger Anita Sarkeesian has gotten for her Tropes Vs Women Kickstarter project, a video project designed to “explore, analyze and deconstruct some of the most common tropes and stereotypes of female characters in games.”
Her YouTube page has been inundated with comments calling her, among other things, a “Dumb ass nazi cunt,” “faggo.. I mean lesbian,” and “the reason why womens are the inferior gender for the whole history of mankind.” IRONY ALERT: while some are calling her a Nazi, or comparing her to the KKK, others are denouncing her as a “bolshevik feminist jewess” and a “fucking ovendodger.”
And still others are defacing her Wikipedia entry with all sorts of vile shit. (Here’s a screenshot.)
Here’s her discussion of the harassment, which includes screenshots of some of the comments.
An Escapist piece on the harassment, which is where I got the quotes above.
A Jezebel piece, “When There’s So Much Bullshit Online, You Forget How to Feel.”
A piece on The Mary Sue, “The All-Too-Familiar Harassment Against Feminist Frequency, and What The Gaming Community Can Do About It”
Kotaku also weighed in, leading one commenter there to note that similarly misogynistic comments appear there all the time.
Meanwhile, over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, temple117 garners 138 net upvotes for a post urging poor oppressed men to “Fight back! Sexism exists for males too, support these men in their expose of gender tropes in video games!”
And, joy of joys, Men’s Rights buffoon Bernard Chapin has weighed in on the controversy as well. After dismissing the harassment — using a “funny” voice, apparently the most powerful weapon in his rhetorical arsenal — he suggests that women complain about video games because games are a male thing, and women are jealous that men are paying attention to something other than them. “Whatever the male is enjoying himself at,” he says, “it diverts him from taking orders; that’s got to be the focus of their ire.” Then he accuses Sarkeesian of being without “honor” because she’s asking for money to fund her project. (Might want to take that critique up with your pal Paul “Donate Today” Elam, dude.) His video is below, if you want to waste your time with it.
But before you get to that, here’s something a bit more encouraging on the gamer misogyny front: Comedian/actress/gamer Aisha Tyler’s take-no-prisoners takedown of the misogynist assholes who attacked her for allegedly ruining an Ubisoft press conference at the recent E3 gaming extravaganza, apparently by being too female or something. Here’s a screenshot of her comments, and a surprisingly un-disgusting Reddit discussion of the controversy.
Here’s Bern:
New Men’s Rights Posters Fight Misandry with Racism, Homophobia, and Giant Trotskyist Fists [UPDATED]
Even North Korea is better at propaganda than the Men’s Rights Movement. Text reads: “Come to North Korea! We’ve got, like, shitloads of fish.” (Note: I do not actually know Korean.)
It’s sort of reassuring how bad Men’s Rightsers are at communicating with those outside their tiny movement. I should amend that: how bad they are at communicating what they want to communicate — that is, that they are the 21st-century version of the heroic and in many ways successful civil rights movements of the late 20th century. What they tend to communicate instead is what they’d rather the world not see: how blinkered and reactionary and hateful so many of them really are.
Browsing through the Men’s Rights subreddit last night, I ran across a batch of graphics one MRA had prepared for other MRAs to freely use, whether as online graphics, dorm room decoration, or posters to wheatpaste on the nearest family courts building. While avoiding the hysterical misogyny of so many of the graphics up on the Artistry Against Misandry website we looked at recently, CAGeorge’s posters reveal a bit more about himself and the MRM than he perhaps intends them to. Take this poster, ostensibly a call to “resist feminist bullying.” How exactly do you resist such bullying? Apparently, with a giant fist.
Huh. Your movement is known for its violent rhetoric, for downplaying and whitewashing domestic violence against women by pretending that DV affects men and women equally, for promulgating a sort of false-rape-allegation hysteria in no way proportionate to the actual extent of false-rape allegations. In some circles, it’s labeled, fairly or unfairly, as “the abusers lobby.” Do you really think putting this fist on this poster is going to help?
Apparently not. Apparently that fist ISN’T GIGANTIC ENOUGH. Meet MEGA FIST:
So, yeah. Also, FYI, that particular version of the old clenched-fist graphic has been used by the far-left International Socialist Organization (ISO) for several decades. Take a look at the little ISO fist to the right here. Same fist. You may want to switch that out, dudes, lest you inadvertently convert potential MRAs to Trotskyism.
And while I have to give CAGeorge a few points for avoiding the crass misogyny of Artistry Against Misandry, he doesn’t do quite as well avoiding racism and homophobia. Hence this poster, apparently an attempt to scare potential false accusers by suggesting they could end up sharing a cell with a scary and probably dark-skinned dyke.
Naturally, CAGeorge’s artisty won mostly plaudits from the Men’s Rights redditors who stopped by to look and comment.
EDITED TO ADD: Woah. Strike that last sentence. Returning to r/menrights I see that a real, critical discussion of the flyers has erupted. Many of the regulars are unhappy with various aspects of CAGeorge’s choices. Numerous commenters are critical of the fist imagery, including ignatiusloyola, one of the subreddit’s mods, who objects in one highly upvoted comment. One person even mentions the ISO!
Our old pal Sigil1 (a.k.a. the legendary banned Man Boobz commenter Eoghan) is especially critical of the “roommate” poster, and for a good reason: that it essentially threatens prison rape for false accusers. (He doesn’t mention the racism or homophobia.) But he still can’t help but blame the posters on a conspiracy of evil “false flag” feminists trying to make the MRM look bad.
Paul Elam of A Voice for Men, naturally, thinks the posters are fine and dandy.
CAGeorge, meanwhile, defends his poor choices. Here he is dealing with criticism of the “roommate” poster:
The bit about “nullification” is of course a reference to Elam’s infamous suggestion that MRAs should undermine the legal system by voting “not guilty” in trials involving men charged with rape, “even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true.”
Still, this is a real discussion. If the Men’s Rights movement has any chance at all of transforming itself into something really resembling a real progressive movement, it’s going to need to have a lot more discussions like this — and those who really do want to improved the lives of men instead of simply demonizing women will need to make clear that Elam and his ideological comrades are no longer welcome in the movement.
EDITED TO ADD, PART 2: Now the legendarily cloddish MRA videoblogger Bernard Chapin has made a video attacking the posters and the dude who made them. He’s not worried about the violent imagery, or the racism, or the homophobia — as I pointed out recently, he is himself a bit of a homophobe. Nope. He’s mad about the use of evil leftist imagery, and accuses the maker of the posters of being a sneaky Marxist infiltrator trying to co-opt the MRM with evil Marxist symbolism.
Gosh. Paul Elam said he liked the graphics. Is he a secret Marxist infiltrator too?
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:
Ferdinand Bardamu Caught Monologuing Again
“You don’t know the power of the dark side!”
Is there something about being an MRA that makes you want to monologue like a cartoon supervillain?
Over on In Mala Fide, our dear friend Ferdinand Bardamu has responded in an amusingly monologuey manner to Arthur Goldwag’s followup to his earlier article for the Southern Poverty Law Center on the Men’s Rights movement. Bardamu whips himself into a bit of a lather, describing “Snerdling and his compadres” – for some reason he’s decided to call Goldwag “Snerdling” – as the
vanguards of a dying institution, desperately jamming their thumbs in the dike to keep the truth from drowning them. They’re on the losing side of history. Their shrieks are the shrieks of the dying and damned.
Their shrieks?
Oh, but there’s more. This earlier comment in Bardamu’s post is sort of a classic in the “implied threat” genre so beloved by MRAs like Paul Elam and his gang:
You’ve bitten off far more than you can chew here. You’ve antagonized the fastest-growing and most relevant movement/entity in America and the Western world. With every sling and arrow, the manosphere swells in size, a voice for the most powerful and deadliest force on Earth — the disenfranchised young man.
Emphasis mine.
Amazingly, in the very next paragraph, Bardamu waxes indignant that Goldwag had the gall to refer to “threat[s], overt or implicit, of violence” from MRAs. Bardamu responds with a big, insincere “who, me?”
I’ve made threats of violence? Leftists always pull this game — they never give specific examples … .
You want a specific example? LOOK AT WHAT YOU JUST WROTE IN YOUR LAST FUCKING PARAGRAPH. That bit about Goldwag allegedly antagonizing “the most powerful and deadliest force on Earth — the disenfranchised young man?” That is an implicit threat of violence. It’s kind of hard to miss.
You want to see more specific examples of threats from MRAs? I’ve got post after post full of them.
Heck, he doesn’t even need to look at Man Boobz. All he needs to do is to look at the comments on his own post, starting with the very first one:
SPLC: Thanks for kicking the sleeping dog,that dog needed to learn to bite rather than sleep.
Then he can scroll down the page for this more explicit threat from Brigadon:
I prefer practicing real, unmistakable violence.
Further down the page, in response to a feminist who has stopped by to call the IMF regulars on some of their bullshit, Brigadon elaborates further:
I have called it a ‘war’ before, and I will again. It is not a cold war, it is a hot war, with constant and socially-approved violence against men. The only way to fight a hot war is with violence. …
So, maybe it sounds like a call for violence, but at this point any woman that calls herself a ‘feminist’, regardless of their protests that they are ‘not like those other ones’ Is a criminal, a traitor to their species, their culture, their honor, their family, their nation, their gender, and their world. There is only one punishment that fits a traitor.
How dare Goldwag suggest that MRAs ever threaten violence!
Apollo, meanwhile, somehow manages to overlook the threatening language in Bardamu’s post and suggests that the real threatmongers are … you and me:
[T]he Internet is full of people making violent threats. … Yet in the Manosphere, where I think real injustices are being brought to light, and people surely have a right to anger, you will NOT see the threats of violence that are so very common in so many other places of the Internet. When such a violent comment does pop up in the Manosphere, it is usually very quickly squashed by mods. And any such comments stand out simply because of how rare they are.
Yet one visit to Manboob, or any other Feminist site, and you will be able to quickly be able to find threats of violence. The blatant hypocrisy here is just sickening
[Citation Needed]
Also, though this is a whole other kettle of beans, the fact that Goldwag is Jewish seems to have inspired a number of the anti-Semites in the In Mala Fide crowd to crawl out from under their rocks – one of them being our old pal JeremiahMRA, who weighs in with a comment calling Goldwag a “creepy Jew,” in two words combining anti-Semitism with “creep shaming,” which in the weird world of the manosphere is the most hateful kind of hate ever perpetrated upon any mortal soul. (Goldwag offers a brief but pointed response to Bardamu’s post, and to the anti-Semitism, on his own blog.)
Is any of this really surprising on a blog whose name means “In Bad Faith?”
Someone posted this in the comments a while ago, and I couldn’t help but think of it as I wrote this post:
Yes, MRAs, you ARE the baddies.
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.
