Search Results for John the Other, violence
MRA Paul Elam Launches a Hate Campaign Against a College Student for Attending a Demonstration and Making Twitter Jokes
Paul Elam, Poster Boy for a Hate Campaign
Paul Elam is a 55-year-old man who once told a feminist foe that “the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection.” Today he’s launched a campaign of defamation against a college student that’s clearly intended to intimidate her and other feminists into silence. The alleged crimes of this woman, whom Elam identifies by name? Possibly attending a demonstration against MRA author Warren Farrell at the University of Toronto, possibly tearing down posters for the event, and making a couple of jokes on Twitter. Oh, and she also once suggested that Farrell was a misogynist.
Elam has not yet revealed what effect this new campaign has had upon his penis.
While her (apparent) attendance at the anti-Farrell demonstration is what brought the young woman to Elam’s attention, he seems particularly puzzled and enraged by two jokey comments she made on Twitter. In one of them, she joked that her “political position” was “kill all men hail satan.” In the other, she said she was thinking about getting knuckle tattoos that spell out “misandry.”
These jokey comments have evidently convinced Elam that
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.
Pretty harsh words from someone whose YouTube handle used to be TheHappyMisogynist. (Check the URL here.)
So what exactly is the point of publicizing her name, which will give the assholes now posting rape threats and other violent shit about the demonstrators at that Warren Farrell protest the real name of a real, live person to harass?
Elam, while carefully avoiding any direct incitement of harassment and/or violence, makes clear that his aim is to “stop her.”
[She] is not going to stop. And no one at the University of Toronto is going to stop her. We can figure that one out by the fact that they chartered clubs to enable that kind of conduct.
For that reason, we bring her to public attention here at AVfM.
Additionally, over the next two days, she will be listed on register-her.com as a known bigot, and her image and name will find a place on our display of featured offenders.
Elam promises to do the same, by name, to others who attended the protest as well.
The best way to strike back at Elam’s campaign to shut up critics of his hateful Men’s Rights ideology? Make more noise.
If anyone is interested in reaching out to the student and any others who may be targeted by Elam, please contact me or leave a comment below. And if anyone knows how to contact her, please send me an email.
(Also, at one point Elam describes Farrell as “an individual who has dedicated a lifetime to helping children in trouble.” Oh, is that what he was doing when he was working on a book that he said would highlight the alleged “positive” aspects of incest?)
EDITED TO ADD: Just to make clear, this woman is not the same woman that Elam and JohnTheOther were talking about in their previous posts; it’s a different woman, who appears only briefly in that video. It’s not clear if they have the other woman’s info, but if not they are certainly still looking for it.
A Voice for Men continues to spread its message of peace, love, and f*cking people’s sh*t up
Poor Paul Elam. Here he is, the self-annointed leader of the world’s greatest 21st century human rights movement, and for some strange reason people keep mistaking him for some sort of two-bit hatemonger.
No, really!
In his latest post on A Voice for Men, Mr. Elam laments the evil way one Australian news site took AVFM’s rallying cry – “Fuck Their Shit Up” — and made it seem kind of mean. Also, they added an “ing” to “fuck.” Elam writes:
[Journalist Tory] Shepherd (or her editors) gave a subheading to her piece which read:
Hate site’s motto is ‘F***king their s**t up
Misuse of the transitive verb aside, and ignoring the fact that even when properly quoted it is not the sites motto (which is “Take the Red Pill”), the use of that phrase in the sub-header was calculated to make AVfM appear to be a hate site.
How unfair to tag a website with the slogan it uses constantly! And, really, how could anyone see “fuck their shit up” as anything but a spirited call for peacefulness, understanding, and love?
Working in the quote mine, going down down
“I’ve found another incredibly dopey statement from JohnTheOther!”
So our blabby friend JohnTheOther has an especially blabby piece up on A Voice for Men at the moment. Its ostensible subject: the pure eeeevil of unnamed anti-MRAs who misrepresent the World’s Greatest 21st Century Human Rights Movement – the Men’s Rights Movement, that is – through the eeevil practice of “quote mining.”
I didn’t read the whole thing. Mr. TheOther is not what you’d call an efficient writer. Here are a few quotes mined from the article more or less at random that I think will give you a good idea of his, um, style:
Biology, or indeed, evolutionary theory is not really the topic of this discussion, rather it is provided here as example of a rhetorical practice increasingly common among opponents of a small but growing human rights movement. …
The developing practice in opposition to human rights, of quote-mining goes beyond pathetic, into the realm of craven, futile depravity. …
However, it seems that no matter how many times it is explained that a thing formed from (bad) ideas – an ideology, and a group of people, identifiable by sex, are two distinct things, gender ideologues continue to conflate them. …
I don’t know if any of this makes any more sense in context, as I didn’t read the context. Let’s continue:
A year ago, I wrote an article focusing on the necessary public repudiation of violence, and the responsibility of open opposition to those who advocated or promoted a climate of acceptable violence, including those who openly advocate murder, such as a group of swedish feminists, and eugenics advocates on the squalid radical-hub. Statements from my original piece were quoted by at least one amoral zombie, and reframed to present my view as one which called for violence.
Of course, the author of those yellow pixels might not have realized that the original article, along with it’s unambiguous opposition to violence was posted on a site with substantially higher traffic than his own. The craven and stupid dishonesty of the quote-miner was apparent to all but a few, blinded by their own ideological goggles.
Oh, wait, I think those last two paragraphs were supposed to be about me. And I think they were supposed to refer to this post of mine, which took a look at a post of his that defended A Voice for Men’s “outing” of a group of Swedish feminists that the AVFM crew had decided, on the basis of a brief video promoting a theatrical production, were “murder advocates.” His post contained the following (unedited) paragraphs.
That’s right manboob, identifying a group of self-declared murder advocates to the public is more important than protecting those murder advocates from the consequences of advocating murder.
In the truth-is-fiction world of Futrelle’s mind, the men’s right advocates calling for public identification of a hate organization have been transmogrified into promoters of violence.
And what if they get killed David? What if rather than be arrested – as promoters of hate, and public advocates of murder, what if these depraved and murderous female supremacists come to harm at the hands of a citizen. If that happens, it will mean that a society’s system of law, designed to prevent hate organizations, and to allow redress of grievance through non violent due process is gone, wiped out by your ideology of violence and hate. That’s what you’re defending, David.
In my post, I quoted the final paragraph; here I have included the two preceding grafs to give it a bit more, what’s that word, context.
Of course, a couple of paragraphs by themselves are still kind of “out of context” I guess. Since I am pretty sure no one would like it if I simply pasted in the entire post from JtO here, I will instead direct you to his original post, here. You may make of it what you wish. I rather doubt that you will see it as a clearheaded treatise of nonviolence. Especially with that line: “And what if they get killed David?” (Which you can read in context above, or, again, in his original post. Let me link to it a sixth time here, just to make sure you know how to find his original words in context. Oops, that’s seven times now)
Interesting that a master debater of Mr. TheOther’s caliber somehow forgot to provide even one link to the controversy he was referring to, so people might be able to see for themselves what had happened, and judge his claims accordingly. I wonder why that might be?
I’ll skip the next bit in Mr. TheOther’s latest post, in which Mr.TheOther suggests that an opponent of his might have taken a quote of his out of context in a way that makes him look racist and homophobic. But since he offers no links to the actual discussion, there’s no way of judging whether this particular quote-mining claim is true. (Perhaps this discussion on the Men’s Rights subreddit could shed some light on it?)
In any case, if we put this particular discussion in a broader, er, context, there is certainly ample evidence of homophobia amongst the A Voice for Men crowd, as I have pointed out here and here. (Protip: If you want to convince people you are not homophobic, you should probably not feature a video mocking “lesbo-bos” in the sidebar of the site you help to run.)
Anyway, this next bit of his definitely has something or other to do with me:
Bottom feeding quote miners indulging in snarky feats of futrelian deceit likely do win rhetorical brownie points, at least when seen through their own ideological goggles. But they are cementing their own a public persona which will wear about as comfortably as klan robes do at a NAACP meeting. The altered landscape this movement is building is not someday, it is now, and it is coming faster all the time.
Uh, dude, my last name has two L’s in it. It should be “Futrellian deceit.” If you’re going to turn my name into a slur, at least spell it correctly.
For individuals in opposition to human rights of men and boys now, whether through lying, repetition of old, false dogmas, or the craven tactic of mis-represented and mis-attributed meaning, the comfort of a formerly one-sided monologue is over. The public squirming we see in attempts to render MRA voices silent or apologetic will escalate before it abates. But that’s okay.
Hey, Mr. TheOther. If you really want to prove my “futrelian” or even my “Futrellian” deceit, how about this: provide specific examples of me taking something you or some other MRA has written out of context in a way that distorts its meaning.
For your convenience, you can find all the Man Boobz posts that reference you here and here.
And for anyone who now has the song “Working In the Coal Mine” stuck in their head, here’s the Lee Dorsey original:
BREAKING: Paul Elam of A Voice for Men is pig-biting mad at a dude who doesn’t hate Katherine Heigl
Over on A Voice for Men, noted human rights advocate Paul Elam has responded to criticism from a fellow antifeminist internet warrior in his typically logical, understated manner. Some highlights:
He’s whining, about jack shit, on behalf of a misandric cunt. …
Matt Forney just jerked off all over his bed sheets. And now it appears he is standing there like a virtual ‘tard, grinning about it and drooling.
At issue? Mr. Forney wrote a post some months back critical of the faux “offenders registry” called Register-Her, a pet project of A Voice for Men’s JohnTheOther in which female “bigots” – that is, feminists – are “registered” as “offenders” alongside female criminals. (Forney’s post originally appeared on the thankfully now-defunct blog In Mala Fide, but Elam only discovered it after Forney posted it on his own blog.)
In particular, Forney disagreed with Elam’s decision to “register” actress Katherine Heigl as a “bigot” after she made a Funny or Die PSA about spaying dogs and cats. The problem, for Elam and crew? That in the video she pretended to be a crazed testicle-hater obsessed with cutting off all balls, including those of human males. The AVFM crowd whipped themselves into a frenzy over this one, with Elam’s Number One Stooge JohnTheOther writing, in all seriousness:
Katherine Heigl’s supposedly humorous claim; that her advocacy of neutering pets is an outlet for her desire to chop human male’s balls off shouldn’t be taken out of context. The context being that she’s a creature of hollywood who lives in california – the same state which earlier this year saw Katherine Becker cut her husband’s penis off for the “offense” of wanting a divorce. …
We know it’s a joke. That’s the point. It’s both shocking, and plausibly deniable. It also wouldn’t be funny to most people if there was not an element of truth in it. Heigl’s “joke” included the word “yet”. This is an obvious nod to her awareness of increasing cultural acceptance of male-targeted violence and mutilation.
No, I have no fucking clue what on earth he means by that bit about the word “yet.” He goes on:
Male targeting violence persists and escalates because in the unconscious reptile corner of men’s minds, they think nodding along with whatever vile , violent, murderous shit the nearest vacuous barbie utters in her you-go-girl bubble of social enablement might get him approved for access to the magic vagina.
Like Elam, JohnTheOther apparently writes all his posts for AVFM with steam literally coming out of his ears.
Here’s the video in question. (Sorry, it won’t embed.) As you can see, the real butt of the joke is Heigl herself, and more generally narcissistic celebs who glom onto fashionable causes for all the wrong reasons. It’s not really a castration joke; it’s an actress making fun of her own reputation for narcissism. (And the video is also a serious attempt to raise awareness about the need to spay and neuter pets.)
Katherine Heigl, attempting to lull a dog into a false sense of security so she can remove its balls.
Forney, in the blog post that roused Elam’s incredibly easy-to-rouse fury, suggested that AVFM’s claimed outrage about Heigl’s video was both silly and a bit unconvincing:
Were you honestly offended? Did that video get you mad? It didn’t get me mad. I thought it was stupid and unfunny, but aside from that, I don’t care about it. After watching it, I just shrugged my shoulders and closed the tab.
Forney went on to suggest that any MRAs who were offended by the video were, well, basically a bunch of “phony pussies,” a virtual mirror-image of the Politically Correct:
In trying to gin up indignation over Heigl’s ball-cutting comments, Register-Her.com and the MRM are seeking to perpetuate our politically correct regime, not burn it to the ground and piss on its ashes. …
The men’s rights movement wants men to keep picking at their scabs, to wallow in self-pity for all eternity. That’s not a satisfying goal for me, or countless other men who want to rise out of the mud. Until MRAs address this issue, their movement will be stuck in neutral, regardless of their occasional victories.
Yes, that’s right. A dude posting on In Mala Fide — which was known for its blatant misogyny and its proud racism, among other terrible things — is the closest we’ve got to a “voice of reason” in this particular debate.
Elam, an MRA scab-picker extraordinaire, lashed out in barely coherent rage to Forney’s charges:
[T]his kind of chicken-shit nit picking by a supposed sympathizer is far more pathetic that the Heigl video could have ever hoped to be.
Why would the Heigl video hope to be pathetic? Also, how exactly can a video hope?
I write people like you off all the time. But then you have the gumption to parrot a bunch of keyboard courage about crushing your enemies? And you make fun of guys who get fucked over by the system? What a laugh. I don’t mean what you said, but you, personally.
You may be every bit as brave as your words. I doubt it, but I don’t know. What I do know is that your article is a misandric piece of shit. Based on your rhetoric, though, I would lay dollars to doughnuts you have never crushed so much as a Dixie Cup at a water cooler. Your kind of man never does.
Says the man whose entire life is devoted to bashing out angry internet screeds, and whose only known attempt at real-world organizing collapsed before it really even began.
You just shit on those out there taking the hits and doing the work, likely because you lack the conviction to stick your neck out for anything really important to anyone but yourself.
Personally, I would not talk to MRA’s about picking scabs until you quit being one.
I’m not sure if Elam is calling Forney a “scab” as a sort of random insult referring back to his mention of scabs, or if Elam thinks that Forney is a “scab” violating some imaginary MRA “sex strike” – or “cock blockade” – by not hating on the ladies every second of every day. I’m guessing it’s the latter, because Elam really is that delusional.
–
EDITED TO ADD: Matt Forney has responded to Elam’s little tantrum here. At the end, he says this:
And since I can’t end this post without mentioning that David Futrelle has (reluctantly) defended me on this issue, mainly because Elam’s neckbeard fans are going to brandish Futrelle’s article as proof that I’m an evil crypto-feminist racist mangina, let me just say that Futrelle is an even more pathetic bitch than Elam, and I don’t want his support.
Don’t worry, lil dude. I don’t actually support you. I simply agree with you on a couple of points: that Elam is a total drama king, and that anyone who believes (or purports to believe) that Heigl’s video is something to get ENRAGED about is a twit.
Straight White Males oppressed by blog post
So straight white science fiction author dude John Scalzi has created a bit of a hubbub amongst straight white dudes on the interwebs with a blog post called Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is. The post, later reposted on Kotaku, is basically an attempt to talk to fellow dudes in their own language about the concept of privilege “without invoking the dreaded word ‘privilege,’ to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon.” (And they do.)
Scalzi’s thesis:
Dudes. Imagine life here in the US – or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world – is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?
Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.
This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.
Scalzi should have added “cis” to “straight white male,” but otherwise I’d say that’s fairly spot-on.
Of course, as Scalzi himself points out, life for straight white (cis) dudes is not always peaches and cream. They may have any of a number of disadvantages in life that make things difficult for them. They may have been born poor, or in a war zone; they may have been abused as children or the victim of crime or violence as an adult. Or faced any number of other problems and conditions and disadvantages.
Scalzi deals with this issue a little more obliquely than he could have, noting that some people begin the grand game of “The Real World” with more points than others, and that this can make a good deal of difference.
But do straight white cis males face disadvantages stemming from being straight white cis men? I honestly can’t think of any that have affected my life in any serious way, and these small disadvantages pale in comparison to the many advantages. Yeah, I had to register for the draft when I turned 18. Of course, when I registered there was no draft, and there still isn’t one, and the draft has virtually no chance of being resurrected in the foreseeable future, so I can’t say this requirement has affected my life in any tangible way.
As Scalzi puts it:
If you start with fewer points and fewer of them in critical stat categories, or choose poorly regarding the skills you decide to level up on, then the game will still be difficult for you. But because you’re playing on the “Straight White Male” setting, gaining points and leveling up will still by default be easier, all other things being equal, than for another player using a higher difficulty setting.
Anyway, Scalzi got a lot of responses to his post, many of them from straight white dudes outraged by his assertions. So he wrote a followup taking some of these critics to task. He was particularly amused by the criticism that by “picking on” straight white males he was being racist and sexist.
This particular comment was lobbed at me primarily from aggrieved straight white males. Leaving aside entirely that the piece was neither, let me just say that I think it’s delightful that these straight white males are now engaged on issues of racism and sexism. It would be additionally delightful if they were engaged on issues of racism and sexism even when they did not feel it was being applied to them — say, for example,when it’s regarding people who historically have most often had to deal with racism and sexism (i.e., not white males). Keep at it, straight white males! You’re on the path now!
I am sure there are many gems of obtuseosity in the comments, and in the Reddit thread on his original post. But it’s Friday night, and I have a migraine — which sucks, but it’s not because I’m a straight white cis dude — so I’m going to let you guys find them for me.
EDITED TO ADD: Thinking a bit more about Scalzi’s central metaphor here, and I don’t think it completely works: he assumes that obstacles other than racism, sexism, and homophobia can be explained as the equivalent of having started the game with fewer points. But it you have, for example, a disability, that’s something that makes you life harder every day; it’s more akin to raising the difficulty level than to starting off with fewer points. (Not to mention that you’re likely to face bigotry because of it as well.) This doesn’t erase the privileges a straight white male with disabilities gets from being straight, white, and male, of course, but it does ratchet up the difficulty.
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
Tommy Wiseau’s The Room: An unintentional MRA classic?
A rare non-misogynistic moment in The Room
You may have heard of, if you haven’t already seen, the stupefyingly terrible film The Room. The film is so bafflingly inept and nonsensical that you’re hardly surprised to learn that writer, director, and star Tommy Wiseau had never made a film before; indeed, you might find yourself wondering if he’d ever even seen a film before.
The Room (released, barely, in 2003 and available on DVD) is a mawkishly melodramatic, and deadly serious, drama about a man betrayed by his fiancee, which Wiseau has been trying to market as a quirky comedy because no one can watch the film without laughing at his hero’s travails. Rent The Room if you want to stare dumbfounded at your TV for an hour and a half some night. Seriously, rent it.
Seeing it for myself the first time not long ago, I was struck by the manosphere-style misogyny that pervades almost every frame of the movie. It’s not an MRA film, and Wiseau is no MRA, but somehow he manages to encapsulate every terrible stereotype about men and women that most MRAs seem to believe.
The film tells the sad story of Johnny (played by Wiseau), a good-hearted, long-haired banker with an unclassifiable accent who is betrayed at work (he doesn’t get his expected promotion) and, more importantly, by his “future wife” Lisa, who blithely cheats on him with his best friend.
Lisa is portrayed like the evil bitch villain in nearly every MRA urban legend: she’s a self-absorbed twit who, in addition to cheating on Johnny, falsely accuses him of domestic violence and fakes a pregnancy just to fuck with him.
Johnny, meanwhile, is supposed to be seen as a loyal, helpful, compassionate man who cares deeply about his friends and treats his adored “future wife” Lisa like the princess he tells her she is.
I say “supposed to” because Johnny is hardly the great guy Wiseau thinks he is. For one thing, everything he does and says is bit … off, as if his body has been taken over by a space alien who’s learned everything he knows about women (and human interaction in general) by reading comments on Reddit and watching Christopher Walken as “The Continental” on Saturday Night Live without getting the joke.
For another, he’s a rage-filled narcissist with a bad case of “nice guy” entitlement and absolutely no self-awareness. When his friend Mark tells him about a woman beaten so badly she ends up in the hospital, he responds with a hearty laugh. (“What a story, Mark!”) And when he confronts Lisa about her false accusations of domestic violence (“You are lying! I never hit you!”), he angrily shoves her down onto a couch. It doesn’t seem to occur to Johnny (or to Wiseau) that this too is a form of domestic violence.
When, after learning of Lisa’s betrayal, he trashes their apartment and [SPOILER ALERT] kills himself with a conveniently located pistol, Wiseau presents it as the ultimate comeuppance to the cruel Lisa.
While you have to see the whole film to truly appreciate its epic badness, the following clips will give you some idea of what I’ve been talking about.
First, the trailer, which tries its best to cover up the film’s true weirdness:
The infamous “roof scene” in which Johnny tells Mark (the guy Lisa is sleeping with) about Lisa’s accusations of domestic violence:
A compilation of some of Johnny’s best (i.e. worst) moments:
This one (ignore the misleading title) gives you some idea of Lisa’s oblivious evilness:
Here’s Hitler reacting to the film. (Note: Not the real Hitler.)
And here, if you dare, is the whole damn movie in its entirely. (If you’re pressed for time, you may want to fast forward through the film’s five completely unerotic sex scenes, set to the worst slow jams ever recorded.)
EDITED TO ADD: Oh, and here’s the scene the gif above is from. Johnny is the most efficient flower buyer and pug-petter in the world.
“And what if they get killed?” A Voice for Men as an antifeminist Witchfinder General
So John the Other has responded to my post about A Voice for Men’s “bounty” on the makers of the SCUM video. It’s a fairly unhinged rant, even by his standards. Here’s the money quote:
It’s a bizarre bit of circular logic: if some deranged asshole literally kills one or more of the videomakers, this is proof that the Swedish justice system isn’t working, which therefore justifies the deranged asshole’s actions. So the existence of vigilante violence justifies vigilante violence that justifies vigilante violence.
Since when is making a video a capital crime?
After all this, John rather bizarrely claims that “[u]nlike David Futrelle, I do not and will not lend myself to the support of violence, or indeed, of murder.”
That’s because, according to his daft logic, shooting the videomakers would count as “self defense,” because evidently someone posting a video on YouTube that you don’t like is equivalent to someone coming at you with a knife.
While challenging AVfM’s “bounty” — without actually defending the video in any way — apparently means that I support murder. Go figure.
Vincent Price as the Witchfinder General
But dwelling too much on the specifics of this one case is to miss the larger point. A Voice for Men has essentially set itself up as a sort of antifeminist Witchfinder General. In the 1968 cult film of that name, you may remember, the corrupt Witchfinder tested whether the accused were witches by lowering them into water; those who floated were judged guilty, and burned at the stake. Those who sank were innocent, but dead.
Paul Elam and his sidekick John have a similar approach. They intend to do feminists harm, to “fuck their shit up,” regardless of what they’ve done or said. None of those who have been placed in the Register-Her “registry” as “bigots” deserve to be smeared or harassed (or put on the phony “registry” in the first place). But if you look at what they are ostensibly there for, well, you’ll discover that it matters not at all to Elam whether they sink or float. The point is to harass feminists; almost any excuse will do.
One of those on the “registry,” a radical feminist who posts online as Vliet Tiptree , has indeed said some fairly vile things about the male gender; she is the only one who might conceivably be described as a “bigot.” But others are there on trumped up “charges” based on highly tendentious readings of some of their writing; it’s clear that they’ve been targeted mainly because they have been publicly critical of the men’s rights movement.
Meanwhile, another of the alleged feminist bigots is not a feminist at all, but rather a traditional-minded “mom blogger” who aroused Elam’s fury by saying that she didn’t want male daycare volunteers taking her daughter to the bathroom, and for suggesting (incorrectly) that men make up 99% of abusers. (She has since apologized, but remains on the “registry.”)
And one recent candidate for inclusion, a feminist blogger whom Elam has pledged to “stalk,” seems to have made it on Elam’s naughty list simply because she has helped to highlight how pervasive harassment of women and feminists is online. Complain about harassment; get harassed. But Elam’s “critiques” of her are all suspiciously vague. It’s not clear if he has read even a single one of her blog posts. Nonetheless, he promises her that
by the time we are done you will wax nostalgic over the days when all you had to deal with was someone expressing a desire to fuck you up your shopworn ass.
In a post from some months back, Elam offered a similarly psychosexually charged justification for his campaign to “Fuck Their Shit Up.” Directly addressing the “feminazi scumbags reading this right now,” he declared:
I am not going to stop. You see, 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.
Let’s repeat that last bit for emphasis:
the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection.
Does anyone still doubt that the aim of A Voice for Men and Register-Her.com in publishing personal information of their enemies is to intimidate – indeed, to terrorize?
Does anyone still doubt that their campaign is driven by hate?
Does anyone still doubt that they don’t give a shit if their actions cause someone to be physically assaulted or even killed?
Why “Fucking Their Shit Up” is fucked up.
Here’s a picture someone posted to Reddit about a day ago:
Found on Reddit.
The general consensus amongst Redditors who saw the post was that it was hilarious. At last count, the post had gotten 1,157 up votes and 318 down votes, giving it 830 net upvotes. That’s a shitload, even for Reddit; it’s gotten more net upvotes than all but one of the posts currently on the front page of the subreddit (r/vertical) it was posted in.
It’s also pretty fucking offensive — a rape joke, a murder-of-women joke, and a necrophilia joke all rolled into one. Sure, it’s a “joke,” but it wouldn’t be hard to make the argument that pictures like this one, which make violence against women into a joke, can actually serve to encourage such violence.
If you did believe this, what would be the appropriate reaction to such a picture? You could post critical remarks about it in the comments section for the post on Reddit. You could post about it in ShitRedditSays, a subreddit devoted to ferreting out misogyny and racism and other bigotries on Reddit. You could post about it on your blog.
Or you could declare the picture an “unambiguous call for murder” and the person responsible for it to be a ” depraved and murderous male supremacist.” You could offer a reward for information on that person’s real identity, and post that person’s personal information — including their phone number, their place of employment, their home address — online. And if someone points out that posting such information might lead to this person being physically harmed or even killed, you could say: I don’t give a shit.
But that would be wrong.
It would also be terribly time-consuming, because crap like this gets posted to Reddit all the fucking time.
The proper response to speech you don’t like, however vile you think it is, isn’t violence or harassment, but more speech.
If what someone says goes beyond the bounds of free speech, you have other options. If someone threatens you personally, in a posting on the internet or by letter or email or phone call, you have the right to (and you should) report them to the proper authorities. If someone threatens you physically, you have the right to defend yourself.
But a misogynistic picture on the internet is not a threat to you. Nor is a misandrist video. These things are challenges — and in many ways opportunities — for you to make your case against hate. Responding to shit you don’t like on the internet with harassment and threats — implicit or explicit — of violence? That is hate.
Men’s Rights site A Voice for Men offers $1000 “bounty” for personal information on Swedish feminists
A Voice for Men, one of the most influential and popular Men’s Rights websites, is now offering a $1000 “bounty” for anyone able to track down the personal information of several Swedish women involved in a tasteless video advertising a theater production based on Valarie Solanas’ SCUM manifesto. As the anonymous poster calling himself John the Other – the second-in-command at AVfM – put it in a posting yesterday (emphasis in original):
We are asking for the full legal names, home addresses, places of employment, email addresses and contact phone numbers of the women and man who produced and starred in the video described above. We will pay 1000 dollars to any individual who provides and confirms this information, to be paid either directly to themselves or to a charity of their choice.
John explains that this information will be posted on the AVfM-affiliated site Register-Her.com, an “offenders database” that is being used to vilify individual feminists and “Fuck Their Shit Up,” as AVfM head honcho Paul Elam likes to put it. John notes that Regsiter-Her.com also intends to post the “government identification numbers [and] drivers licences” of the women they are able to identify.
John admits plainly that posting such information may put the physical safety of these women at risk from vigilante violence. As he puts it (emphasis mine):
Some individuals may criticize the intent to publish not only names, but also addresses, phone numbers, employers and other personal information – on the grounds that such exposure create a risk of retributive violence against individuals who openly advocate murder based on sex. It is the considered position of the editorial board of AVfM that any such risks are out-weighed by the ongoing hazard to the public of these individuals continuing to operate in anonymity.
The comments posted on the article at AVfM suggest that such “retributive” violence is a real possibility. Indeed, here’s the very first comment (which currently has 17 upvotes from readers of the site):
A commenter called Xnomolos, in another upvoted comment, adds:
i would love to hunt down these women myself.
JinnBottle responds to this comment by advising “all men to start carrying guns.”
The commenters on AVfM have already uncovered the identities of all of the women involved in the video. The blogger Fidelbogen has been the most active internet detective so far.
There is no question that the video itself is offensive, and designed to provoke. You can see it here; I’m not going to embed it on this site. If you don’t want to watch it: it depicts a young woman shooting a man in the head for no reason. Afterwards the woman and her gleeful, giggling accomplices do a victory dance, then lick the blood from the dead man’s head. A message at the end urges viewers to “Do Your Part.”
Every feminist I know who has seen the video has been appalled by it. I’m appalled by it. It’s hateful, and it’s wrong.
But John the Other, and the other commenters on AVfM, claim that it is more than this: that that the video of the staged murder, intended to provide publicity for a theater production based on Solanas’ notorious SCUM manifesto, is quite literally an open call for the murder of men. As John the Other puts it:
Open advocation of murder cannot be allowed in a civil society, without that society devolving into a culture of brutal violence.
Evidently he has no problem with, or has somehow not noticed, the comments on AVfM fantasizing about shooting and killing the women involved in the video.
Is the video a literal call to murder? Is it, as one AVfM commenter puts it, evidence of a “conspiracy to commit mass murder?” No. Violence and murder have been dramatized in the theater since its beginnings. No one accuses Sophocles of advocating fratricide and incest, though both are dealt with in his play Oedipus Rex. No one accuses Shakespeare of advocating mass murder, though many of his most famous plays have body counts that put many horror films to shame.
Does the tag line at the end of the video – “do your part” – transform the video from a depiction of murder into an open call for it? No. The “threat,” such as it is, is vague; it’s not aimed at any specific individuals. It might be seen as akin to someone wearing a t-shirt that says “kill ‘em all, let God sort them out” – tasteless and offensive, but not a literal threat. “Kill ‘Em All” is actually the name of Metallica’s first album. While a lot of people see James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich et al as pompous idiots, they have not been jailed for conspiracy to commit mass murder. That would be ridiculous.
Someone claiming to have been involved in the SCUM-inspired theatrical production in question has posted several detailed comments on AVfM, explaining that those involved in the production are “not out to get you” and that the video itself was “meant as a viral “wtf?!” to give attention to both the questions that it raises and the play itself.”
By contrast, AVfM is targeting specific individuals, and intends to offer information that would allow anyone intent on doing them harm to quite literally track them to their homes and workplaces. Those fantasizing about killing these woman are not simply making a joke along the lines of “women, can’t live with ‘em; can’t kill ‘em.” They are fantasizing about killing real people, and providing would-be evil-doers maps to their doors.
AVfM is an American site, in English; these specific women live in Sweden. While it is a real possibility, it seems unlikely that anyone reading the site will literally find and murder any of those involved in the SCUM production. At least I hope that this does not come to pass.
I don’t believe that either Paul Elam or John the Other literally wants any feminist to be killed. The real intent behind AVfM’s publishing people’s personal information, it seems clear, is to intimidate feminist writers and activists into shutting up, to make clear that if they post something that offends the internet vigilantes at AVfM they will face the possibility of some deranged individual quite literally showing up at their door intent on doing them harm.
Paul Elam and John the Other claim that they’re not advocating violence. But they are playing a dangerous game here. If some deranged individual, inspired by the hyperbolic anti-feminist rhetoric on AVfM, and armed with information provided by “Register-Her.com,” murders or otherwise harms a feminist blogger or activist or video maker, Elam and his enablers will have blood on their hands. As will those MRAs who continue to publicly support and/or link to AVfM and/or Register-Her.com.
This is not the way a legitimate rights group deals with those who disagree with them. This is what hate groups do.
