Search Results for paul elam
When anonymous threats are not-so anonymous
When feminists are besieged with threatening messages after being targeted by Men’s Rights Activists, MRAs sometimes ask how we know for sure that the messages (or at least a good portion of them) are being sent by MRAs. And the answer is that, in most cases, we don’t, at least not beyond a reasonable doubt, because most people sending threatening messages have the good sense to do so anonymously.
So it is possible, at least theoretically, that when, say, a feminist blogger gets threatening messages shortly after MRAs start posting nasty things about her on their blogs and in their various forums, it is not MRAs sending the messages but angry ornithologists who, for no reason whatsoever, collectively decided to pick on a feminist blogger that day. Seems unlikely, but it’s possible.
Other times, though, we do know who is sending the threats, because, conveniently enough, they do so under their own name or using their MRA identity online.
That was the case, you might recall, when Australian MRA and fanatical A Voice for Men supporter Frank James Spencer, also known as KARMA MRA MGTOW, left me a creepy, vaguely threatening voicemail message one night at 1:38 AM. That was the case with many of those posting threatening YouTube comments about a certain inadvertently famous Canadian feminist.
And that was the case last night when a longtime MRA known as Masculist Man tried to post a threatening message in the comments to a post of mine about a threatening comment directed at me on The Spearhead. The Spearhead comment, you may remember, involved a weird and elaborate anal rape fantasy. I noted in my post that the comment had gotten 10 upvotes, no downvotes.
Masculist Man added his two cents (click for larger version):
He’s probably right about the 500 upvotes. Apparently rape threats are a form of Human Rights activism.
I wrote about a ranty blog post of Mr. Man’s some time ago, and he’s written several posts about me, or at least about someone he calls Dave Fooltrelle. I let him comment here for a time as well. He was always obnoxious, though never quite this obnoxious.
Mr. Man’s blog is called, creatively, Men’s Rights Blog. In addition to the aforementioned ranty post, it features a cartoony avatar of himself wearing a fedora and brandishing a sword, with the caption “I’ll cut ya.” As part of his “activism,” he’s put up a page of anti-feminist “memes,” many based on photos of real feminists, including me. The blog has been around since 2007.
In his profile on Blogger, he declares
I’ve been a masculist for over 20 years and have been very activist,both on and offline. I’ve debated phonies and feminists and have prevailed over both.
He lists Warren Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power as one of his favorite books, and Neil LaBute’s misogynistic fantasy In The Company of Men as one of his favorite films.
And if you follow the link to Mr. Man’s Facebook page, you can take a look at his small collection of Facebook friends, including AVFM’s Paul Elam and MRA lawyer Roy Den Hollander, as well as the groups he supports, including the National Coalition for Men, the Men’s Human Rights Movement Facebook group, and assorted anti-VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) groups.
So, yeah, I think it’s safe to say that this threatening comment came from an MRA.
Warren Farrell on Date Rape: Defending the Indefensible
George Orwell, meet Warren Farrell
Men’s Rights Activists tend to be fairly blunt; when they express a noxious opinion – and oh so many of their opinions are noxious – they do it in the most obnoxious possible way. It isn’t enough for Paul Elam of A Voice for Men to blame victims of rape; he also has to call them “STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH[es]” wearing the equivalent of PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign[s] glowing above their empty little narcissistic heads.”
Warren Farrell is different. He takes a softer approach. He would never call a woman a bitch or a whore or a cunt. When he speaks, he manages to sound gentle and caring. He talks about the importance of listening to others. He sometimes even manages to give the impression that he cares as much about women as he does about men.
And yet his ideas are as noxious as Elam’s. He is as much of a victim blamer as any slur-spouting MGTOWer complaining about “stuck-up cunts” on an internet message board.
It’s just that he does his victim blaming with such carefully evasive language that he’s able to hide the noxiousness of his ideas – and to avoid taking responsibility for them when he’s challenged on them.
After a feminist activist at Queen’s University reports being attacked, possibly by an MRA, the king of “fuck their shit up” responds with angry denial
Paul Elam: Anger is “pulsing through my veins like molten lava.”
A student at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, says she was attacked and beaten by a strange man after receiving threatening messages about her opposition to a Men’s Rights group on campus. On Thursday, Danielle d’Entremont posted a picture of her bruised face to Facebook along with this explanation:
Just walked out of my house and got attacked by a stranger. I was punched in the face multiple times and lost half my tooth. This was after a few threatening emails regarding my support for feminist activities on campus. I can’t say for sure if the two are connected, however the attacker was a male who knew my name.
The campus Men’s Issues Awareness Society (MIAS) – the group d’Entremont has been fighting – has condemned the attack, as has the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE), which co-sponsored a talk the MIAS put on Thursday. The police are investigating.
Right now, this is pretty much all we know about the story. Not that it this has stopped MRAs from offering their very fervent opinions on the matter.
Before we get to them, here are a few of my own:
Quiz: Who said “Sluts are just whores in training?”
Misogynists also like to remain anonymous when they make terrible jokes
Time for a little quiz!
Who posted comments online in which he (or she) declared that:
“Sluts are just whores in training.”
“Women look at 2 bulges on a man, one in the front of the pants or second one in the back pocket. Whichever one is bigger, they can do without the other.”
“What’s the most used line in Arkansas: daddy get off me you are crushing my cigarettes.”
Female college students are “sororostutes.”
Women expect special treatment because of their “golden vajay jays”
Khloe Kardashian is “black by injection.”
Your choices are:
5 Arguments Least Likely To Convince A Young Woman That A Voice for Men Isn’t a Misogynistic Hate Site
Hey ladies! Dean Esmay reaches out to the young women of America
Not that long ago, an 18-year-old student named Carly, appalled by the rampant misogyny on display at A Voice for Men, sent a critical but thoughtful email to a number of the men associated with the site challenging them to rise above their hatred of women.
AVFM “Managing Editor” Dean Esmay decided to take her email as an opportunity to reach out to all the Carlys out there in the world in an attempt to win them over to AVFM’s peculiar brand of “human rights activism,” penning what he called an
open letter … not just to you, but to any young woman who has an open mind and is willing to be challenged on her prejudices.
Naturally, given that Men’s Rights Activists are some of the most verbose douchebags in history, it was long as hell — some 3000 words. But Esmay’s diplomatically worded attempt at outreach didn’t go quite as well as he might have hoped. Carly responded with a note saying that his open letter had merely
reinforced everything I believe. It seems we are at a stalemate, you will never agree with me, and I will never agree with you.
So where might poor Dean Esmay might have gone wrong in his attempt to win Carly’s heart and mind?
Let’s start here, with 5 Arguments Least Likely To Convince A Young Woman That A Voice for Men Isn’t a Woman-Hating Piece of Shit Hate Site, in the form of direct quotes from The Esmay himself. Since Esmay is so long-winded, I’ve highlighted some of my favorite bits in bold.
1)“[Y]ou’re 18, and so, not to put too fine a point on it, you are still a young skull full of mush.”
2) “[M]en have few to no voices speaking about issues that are specific to men, or defending men as a group, in this society. Until very recently in history men never have had such a voice. Because pretty much all civilizations for the last few thousand years have prioritized the needs and desires of women over those of men. For hundreds, even thousands, of years.
3)“If you believe men have silenced women for thousands of years … you believe something that just not true. … Furthermore, if you believe that, what you have to believe is that Asian men have been oppressing Asian women for thousands of years, black men have been oppressing black women for thousands of years, European men, Australasian men, and so on, have all been oppressing their women for thousands of years. And those weak women could do nothing about it. So what you believe here isn’t just wrong, it’s racist.”
4) “For most of history, being female was a privilege. It carried certain special rights that only applied to women, and special responsibilities that only applied to women, and through most of history, being male was a burden, a burden which carried certain rights that only applied to men, and those rights were there mostly so they could discharge their duties to women properly.”
5) “[Y]ou may occasionally see angry remarks or articles on this site. What I would hope you would do with that, when you do see it, is contemplate that there is a difference between righteous anger at real injustice, and what you seem to have misinterpreted as hate.”
The funniest thing about Esmay’s “open letter” is that this bizarre crackpottery, easily seen through by anyone with any knowledge of history or sociology or, hell, the real world, is his attempt to sound as reasonable as possible. He’s reined in the wild conspiratorial ranting he often indulges in when arguing with ideological foes; he’s avoided the misogynistic slurs (cunt, bitch, whore) favored by other AVFMers like Paul Elam and Diana Davison. And this is the best he can manage.
The Men’s “Human Rights” Movement isn’t ready for its close-up. And I suspect that it never will be.
EDITED TO ADD: A commenter has pointed out another quote I should have included as well. So here is BONUS EXTRA LEAST CONVINCING DEAN ESMAY ARGUMENT NUMBER SIX:
6) “The truth is, the most privileged class of people in the whole wide world are young women living in places like the US, UK, Canada, etc.–and if you want to be treated like an equal, you should not flinch or cry like a little girl if someone tells you that.“
How dare you accuse us of sexism, you spoiled little girl!
A Voice for Men presents: The [vagina-related slur redacted] Monologues
It is very c-worthy.
So the other day, in writing about the shutdown of MGTOWforums.com, I quoted a rather ironic comment from Men’s “Human Rights” Activist Paul Elam about the site, which he denounced as a hive of “self-consuming bitterness” that was essentially
one rolling “cunts and whores” diatribe after another, spiced only with vicious attacks on men who were deemed less than worthy by Nacho Vidal’s standards.
The irony, of course, was that if you replaced “Nacho Vidal’s” name with Elams’s, his statement was in fact also a perfect description of his own site, A Voice for Men.
But I didn’t really have the space to properly document just how pervasive “‘cunts and whores’ diatribes” are on AVFM. So today I’d like to start that process, by looking at some selected examples of times in which contributors to AVFM — not commenters, but actual article writers and in some cases staff members — resorted to the c-word to make their points, whatever the hell those happened to be.
MGTOWforums goes away — or does it?
A bit of drama in the land of misogyny: The guy behind MGTOWforums.com, the leading site devoted to so-called Men Going Their Own Way and one of the most reliable purveyors of highly mockable misogyny, has decided to, well, go his own way. (Sorry, I had to.)
Last night, MGTOWforums founder “Nacho Vidal” (not the real porn star) took the forums down, replacing them with a rather embittered farewell letter. But as of a few minutes ago, the forums were BACK UP again, albeit with no explanation and no new posts since last night. (Perhaps the site is just going to remain up as an archive?)
More on this as it develops, but in the meantime, let’s take a look at Nacho Vidal’s long goodbye:
Wil Wheaton to MRAs: You’re idiots. MRAs: Yeah, well, you’re a mangina! And women actually like you! And your narration is bad!
Wil Wheaton is hiding somewhere in this official portrait of Kim Jong Un and pals. From photoshopwilwheaton.tumblr.com
So the Men’s Rights movement has faced some setbacks in the past. The Southern Poverty Law Center profiling them as a movement filled with hate (if not literally a hate group by the SPLC’s strict definition). Events that literally no one showed up to. Paul Elam.
But MRAs have never faced anything quite like this.
Wil Wheaton — yes, that Wil Wheaton, the one who was on Star Trek TNG — has stated publicly that he thinks they’re a bunch of idiots:
Naturally, this tweet has the fellas in the Men’s Rights subreddit feeling hurt and angry. Well, they always feel hurt and angry, so I guess I mean they feel even more hurt and angry than usual, with a lot of this hurt and anger directed in a Wil-Wheatony direction.
Here are some of their comments. I don’t really have any jokes to make about them because, I mean, just read them. I can’t top this sort of ridiculousness.
Click on the individual comments to see them in context on Reddit. Oh, and note that this comment at the top has MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED UPVOTES.
![giegerwasright 119 points 7 hours ago (150|31) Wil Wheaton has never had to live life as a regular man. He has never been treated by women as a regular man. He is a privileged white male. All those things that feminists say that white men have that we recognize are actually really only reserved for rich white men? Well. He's a rich white male. So. What do you expect? Perspective? LOL. He has media to sell and pussy to pander to for approval, hanglowstankin, and profit. permalink source save give gold hide child comments [–]cfornax 63 points 7 hours ago (82|17) Ironic isn't it. He undermines men to elevate his privileged status in eyes of feminists who wish to undermine his privileged status. permalink source save parent give gold [–]giegerwasright 39 points 7 hours ago (53|17) And that, my dear lad, is how the wealthy mangina maintains his status. Key word being "wealthy", a distinction that the unfortunately unwealthy manginas don't recognize. Always. Follow. The money.](http://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/geiger2.png?w=604)
Wait. What is “hanglowstankin?” Oh, never mind.
Also, I would bet a mint-in-box Wesley Crusher action figure that Wheaton didn’t call you guys “idiots” because he wanted to pander to “pussy” but rather because you are the sorts of guys who routinely refer to women as “pussy.”
![ruboos [-2] 10 points 7 hours ago (16|6) Wil Wheaton has always been a self hating misandrist. I've never liked him. And his narration is atrocious. Listen to "Ready Player One" if you don't believe me. The dude is a joke. Thank you for calling him out in public. He has no excuse.](http://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/narration.png?w=604)
![AnotherDAM 14 points 7 hours ago (24|10) Just because someone is famous in one context does not make him an expert in any, or every, other context. The man made a decent beer with Stone Brewing, he is incredibly practiced at talking with people so don't expect to win a war of words with him or out "cool" him. Just point out to him that he has had everything handed to him on a silver platter his entire adult life ~ he doesn't need to worry about money or getting girls or an invite to the uber-cool CES ~ does not actually mean his opinion matters to anyone but himself. He will eventually get it when all of his male friends start dying decades before his female admirers. permalink source save give gold hide child comments [–]VortexCortex [+1] 4 points 3 hours ago (5|1) I would merely appeal to his sense of logic: "There's much evidence to the contrary, Wheaton; You have not tried try to refute the null hypothesis before holding your belief." Not that it would actually work -- He's an actor who once played a young scientist -- but many of his viewers practice rationality.](http://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/dyingrational.png?w=604)
But Wil had one defender amongst the Men’s Rightsers:
![chocoboat 6 points 5 hours ago (25|19) Wil is still cool. He just got misinformed by some feminists, who in an effort to protect their privilege, smear the name of MRAs and fight against equality when it doesn't serve them. He was taught that MRA = a whiny bitch who wants a return to 1950s gender roles and can't stand women having any power over anything. Of course he thinks that kind of person is an idiot. Don't bash Wil, bash the people who misinformed him. I can virtually guarantee you that he would support the same pro-equality ideas that MRAs do, and that he's against the sexist situations that men sometimes run into (such as being arrested after calling police when your wife attacks you, or being made to change airline seats due to "every man is a pedophile" hysteria). permalink source save give gold hide child comments [–]Zetadood 17 points 4 hours ago (23|4) Nah, no one gets a pass for misinformed ignorance. If he changes his views later on that's different, until then he's a tool.](http://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/wilcool.png?w=604)
EDIT: H/T to the AgainstMensRighters for pointing me to this.
A Voice for Men calls Tory Shepherd a liar for saying it calls women “whores.” Then it calls her a “whore.”
Male Studies
A couple of days ago, Men’s Rights rageoholic Paul Elam angrily denounced journalist Tory Shepherd as a liar for saying that his A Voice for Men website “regularly calls women ‘bitches and whores,’ which it does not.”
Now, anyone who has actually read his website for any length of time knows this is patently false. As if to underscore just how baldly Elam was lying in his post three days ago, the site today ran a post attacking her with this headline:
Australian “Male Studies” initiative under fire because of its connections to raving misogynists; raving misogynists blame feminists
Antifeminist attorney, A Voice for Men contributor, and would-be Male Studies lecturer Roy Den Hollander bustin’ a move on the Colbert Report.
NOTE: See the end of the piece for an important clarification from the University.
So it seems the new “Male Studies” initiative at the University of South Australia is running into a few problems. Well, one big problem: members of the general public have discovered that some of the people involved with the initiative are raving misogynists, or have chosen to associate themselves with raving misogynists.
Yesterday, a story by journalist Tory Shepherd noted that two of the lecturers have written for a notoriously misogynistic website by the name of A Voice for Men. (You may have heard of it.) One of them, the crankish American attorney Roy Den Hollander, even suggested in a post on that site that men’s rights activists may have to take up arms against the evil Feminists who run the world.
