Blog Archives
Paul Elam to A Voice for Men conference goers: Don’t say terrible things about women in public, because someone might hear you
Let’s say, hypothetically, that you run a site that appeals to raving misogynists given to launching into violent anti-woman rants at the drop of a hat. And let’s just say that you have gone to great trouble to organize a conference that is designed to play down the fact that a significant amount of your fanbase is made up of raving misogynists given to launching into violent anti-woman rants at the drop of a hat.
Well, you probably shouldn’t post a public announcement warning the raving misogynists who will be attending your conference to refrain from launching into violent anti-woman rants at the drop of a hat because someone might hear them. Because the fact that you feel it necessary to issue such a warning is kind of a giant clue that a significant number of the conference attendees are raving misogynists given to launching into anti-woman rants at the drop of a hat.
I bring this up because Paul Elam posted just such a warning on his site last night in a post that he labeled “Important Message for AVFM Conference Ticket Holders.”
Why is A Voice for Men giving a platform to one of Canada’s leading opponents of gay and lesbian rights? [UPDATED with AVFM response]
Gay marriage isn’t a men’s right, according to AVFM conference speaker Anne Cools
A Voice for Men likes to present itself as a voice for gay men as well as straight ones. In a recent post, site founder and chief fulminator Paul Elam declared that
We regard men as human beings, regardless of their sexuality. And most of us feel that this is the salve that heals what has in recent history been inflicted on gay men.
No mention of lesbians, but of course they’re women, and Elam does not seem to like women very much.
AVFM managing editor Dean Esmay, meanwhile, likes to present himself as a champion not only of gay men but of lesbians as well, boasting in one recent tweet that “I have been lesbian-supporting since the ’80s.”
So why is AVFM giving a platform to one of Canada’s most influential opponents of same-sex marriage — and gay and lesbian rights in general?
Feminist-hating lawyer Roy Den Hollander sues “modern-day, book-burning, Bacchae reporters from down-under” on broomsticks for allegedly losing him a teaching gig
Roy Den Hollander: Are we lawyer or are we dancer?
The other day I suggested that perhaps it was unfair to the Men’s Rights movement to allow them to handle their own public relations, given how terrible they are at it. Today I wonder if the same principle might also apply to MRAs trying to handle their own lawyering.
A case in point: the lawsuit that antifeminist lawyer, “Ladies Night” hater and hip-hop dance enthusiat Roy Den Hollander has just brought against Australian journalist Tory Shepherd, who wrote about the involvement of Den Hollander and others with links to “men’s rights extremists” in a proposed set of “male studies” courses at the University of South Australia.
It’s still not clear to me if these courses had ever been formally approved – the university says they weren’t – but Den Hollander thinks that Shepherd and another Australian reporter got them cancelled by writing about them. And so he figures that they should compensate him for losing him his teaching gig.
You may vaguely remember all of this. A Voice for Men, heavily involved in the courses, famously denounced Shepherd as a “whore” shortly after AVFM’s Paul Elam indignantly called her a liar for suggesting that A Voice for Men regularly calls women whores. (Which of course it does; Elam himself used the word “whore” 28 times in a single post about Skepchick’s Rebecca Watson.)
Anyhoo, so Den Hollander, acting as his own lawyer, has served Shepherd with the lawsuit. And it’s a doozy of a document, at least going by the excerpts Shepherd posted in a column Wednesday.
Somehow we doubt that this lawsuit is going to enhance Den Hollander’s reputation as a fair-minded analyst of gender relations.
Here are some of the best bits, as presented by Shepherd in her column as “some lessons from Mr Den Hollander, who will not be paid to give lessons at UniSA.”
Lesson 1: How to censor a journalist by accusing them of censorship.
“Two modern-day, book-burning, Bacchae reporters from down-under authored and published false and misleading information concerning Plaintiff (Den Hollander) with the intent and result of harming his economic interests and interfering with a prospective economic advantage by causing the University of SA to incinerate the section of a proposed male studies course that Plaintiff would have taught,” he writes. But wait.
Lesson 2: How to personally attack a journalist by accusing them of personal attacks.
“The two reporters, Tory Shepherd, AKA “Tory the Torch” for The Advertiser and Amy McNeilage, AKA “Amy McNeuter” for The Sydney Morning Herald, used their power as reporters to do what weak-minded ideologues have done throughout history — employ personal attacks to prevent the spread of knowledge and ideas that they disagreed with.”
Lesson 3: How to prove you are not an extremist by sounding like an extremist.
“If these two feminist book-burners had not jumped on their broomsticks and scared the bejesus out of the administrators of the University of SA, students there would have had an opportunity to acquire information and consider views not available anywhere else in higher education.”
Yeah, I’m sure that sort of thing is going to go over great in court.
Elsewhere in his lawsuit, Den Hollander denounces “yellow, female-dog-in-heat reporting,” takes a swipe at “girlie-guys,” and offers this intriguing take on Australian military history:
Thank goodness for Australians that Tory was not around for Australia’s battle against the Japanese. Her anti-gun advocacy for men might have even resulted in her and Amy ending up as Japanese “comfort girls.”
The case does at least promise to be highly entertaining, so I guess we have to give Den Hollander credit for that.
Woah, what’s this? Is A Voice for Men engaging in honest self-criticism?
This could come in handy.
I was skimming through the A Voice for Men forum the other day and was stunned to find, hidden away amongst the other posts in the “rants” section, an absolutely blistering critique of AVFM itself:
Master bullshit artists, adept at stirring up drama and scapegoating, shifting all blame and accountability onto convenient disliked targets. … Used to getting what they want, having little to no accountability … and covertly aggressively lashing out at those who dare not worship them, being the one to start it, and repeatedly. Using an arsenal of social weapons at their disposal at anyone who gets in their way: accusations of [misandry], ad hominem attacks, constant contempt … public humiliation, playing on prejudices and hatred to turn people against their targets … going on the assault at others’ self-image, reputation and credibility over the pettiest of motives, the most outrageously falsely perceived slights, with calculated Machiavellian cunning towards their pettiest of aims.
Nailed it, huh?
Ok. SPOILER ALERT. I kind of lied. This comment wasn’t aimed at AVFM. It was aimed at “bitches.”
Here’s the opening wall-of-text paragraph that I left out:
I think manipulative, catty, conniving, calculating females are pure evil. Applying indirect, covert aggression as a power play, manipulating men to get in their good graces and climb up the pecking order, before aggressively attacking those who don’t “fit in” for their own sadistic pleasure, to aggrandise their own ego and to raise their own status. Playing the victim to stir white knights to go on the attack at their target, when they are the aggressor. Having utter contempt and disdain for anyone they sleep with. Expecting males to be Teflon and always shifting the blame when anyone else gets hurt – it’s always the other person’s fault for being hurtable, for not being Teflon – they always have zero accountability for any harm caused, deny any role in it, and tell themselves it’s not them to feel good and look good. Deluding people, by putting on a cute demeanour, that “she wouldn’t do that”. Using charm to beguile, while calculatingly lashing out at anyone who dares to reveal their true colours or who even sees through their mask at what they really are. Totally void of empathy or sympathy, while putting it on purely fakely to gain an advantage.
And here’s the bit I quoted at the start, though this time I’ve put all the bits I carefully reworded or ellipsed away the first time through back in again; they’re in bold.
Master bullshit artists, adept at stirring up drama and scapegoating, shifting all blame and accountability onto convenient disliked targets. Seeing their own cuntish wiles as meritous. Used to getting what they want, having little to no accountability, being placed on a pedestal and feeling they belong there, sneering down their noses in contempt at those who respect them (the latter being pawns in their power play), and covertly aggressively lashing out at those who dare not worship them, being the one to start it, and repeatedly. Using an arsenal of social weapons at their disposal at anyone who gets in their way: accusations of misogyny, ad hominem attacks, constant contempt and a complete disregard for other people’s boundaries, malicious back-talk, public humiliation, playing on prejudices and hatred to turn people against their targets, an opportunistic use of political correctness, going on the assault at others’ self-image, reputation and credibility over the pettiest of motives, the most outrageously falsely perceived slights, with calculated Machiavellian cunning towards their pettiest of aims.
Yeah, it sounds a lot more AVFMish that way.
Even after four years of reading this bullshit, I’m a bit amazed at just how much of MRA, er, philosophy seems to be little more than projection.
Elliot Rodger and Me: The anatomy of a “Honey Badger” smear campaign
I have a new theory that I think might help to explain why so many Men’s Rights Activists are so obsessed with false accusations of rape. It’s simple: They are so used to making false accusations themselves, about pretty much everything, that it’s hard for them to conceive of someone making an accusation that is actually true.
Naturally, as a critic of the Men’s Rights movement I’m a fairly reliable target for these false charges, and rarely does a day go by in which I don’t learn some new, terrible, and wholly imaginary thing I’m alleged to have said or done. Hell, these days I can barely make it through a Twitter conversation with A Voice for Men’s Dean Esmay without him spouting some grotesque falsehood about me.
The latest accusation from the A Voice for Men crowd – or at least from AVFM’s so-called Honey Badger Brigade – is that all the media talk about Elliot Rodger being an MRA was my fault. Or, as “Honey Badger” Alison Tieman put it in a tweet that she sent to an assortment of media outlets that had written about Rodger and the MRAs,
Coming Attractions: We Hunted the Mammoth announces new animated video series!
Ok, so, yeah, the rumors are true. I am a cat.
But the important thing here is that I’m starting up a new series of (barely) animated videos to explore the one part of online misogyny-land I have generally avoided up until now: YouTube.
Well, internet “radio” shows, podcasts and so on are fair game as well. Basically anything that involves these people talking into a microphone and putting it online.
My videos will be highlight some of the best of the worst of this stuff, and, as I say in the video, distil it into bite-sized morsels instead of the half-hour ordeals that MRAs and men going their own way and girls who write WTF tend to put forth with such alarming regularity.
Plus they’ll be animated in amusing and possibly slightly disturbing ways.
I’m also serious about needing some help.
Like I said, I hate watching their stupid fucking videos. I mean, reading this stuff I can handle. But listening to these assholes blathering on interminably, so full of anger, in their smug, ignorant voices is about as entertaining to me as dental work. I’m going to force myself to do it, but I’m not going to like it.
But I know there are a few of you out there who are actually willing to subject yourselves on a regular basis to this crap. And so I ask of you: if you’re one of them, and you run across something in one of these videos that is so astoundingly terrible that you would like to see it rendered in cartoon form, drop me an email (my last name at manboobz dot com) or leave a link in the comments below.
It’s especially helpful if you can include a rough time-stamp so I can find the particularly egregious bits. See, I’m not interested in analyzing their entire videos here. Only the brief revealing moments where they let something truly astounding slip. I’m also looking specifically for contradictions: if one of these guys or gals says something in one video that directly contradicts something they say in another.
Also, and I didn’t mention this in the video, but this may be your great chance to become a talking kitty, or some other interesting and/or adorable animal!
If you want to volunteeer your voice talents for a future video, let me know! I may come back to some of you who already helped with that last video project, and reach out to some of the rest of you who volunteered after all the slots were filled. I’ll post more about this when I get into making these videos.
This could also be your kitty’s great chance to become a talking kitty! If you have adorable pics of your cat or some other animal that might work well for a video, send me your pics, or link me to them online, and I may use one or more of them in a future video! I’m also looking for interesting photos to use as backdrops. And weird pics in general.
Oh, and if any of you have experience running your own channels on YouTube, I’m interested in any advice you can give on promotion, handling comments, and all that jazz. The last time I put videos on YouTube I sort of felt that they could, and should, have had a lot more viewers than they ultimately did.
Onward and upward.
Together, we can do this.
“Stealing me for daddy’s money hurts me too,” and other nuggets of wisdom from some dude’s MRA memes
Woah, dude, that’s like … incomprehensible.
Sometimes I wonder if we’re being unfair to Men’s Rights Activists by allowing them to handle their own publicity. I mean, it’s pretty clear that they’re terrible at it. Worse than terrible, really. Terribler. Possibly the terriblest.
I mean, just this week we saw the official social media director of A Voice for Men’s conference in Detroit announcing the conference’s new venue with this:
Dizzy With Success: Paul Elam announces triumphant move of AVFM conference to less convenient venue
Quick, look over there!
So A Voice for Men, having lost or abandoned the original venue for their “Men’s Issues” conference in Detroit, has announced its new location: A VFW post some 18 miles away from the original hotel where, presumably, most of the conference’s attendees will be staying.
According to Paul Elam, they made the move in large part to spare conference-goers the terrible inconvenience of having to watch the no-doubt riveting presentations from an “overflow room.”
No, really.
In a post last night, Elam declared that all the media attention given to the conference
Is A Voice for Men’s conference kaput? Doubletree says “they are not booked with us.” [UPDATE: Elam says they have another venue.]
Woah! Just wanted to pass along this news from the Motor City Muckraker:
A controversial conference for a men’s rights group in Detroit appears to be in jeopardy after a fallout with downtown’s Hilton DoubleTree, which planned to host the event from June 26-28.
The inaugural conference at the DoubleTree has been canceled for unknown reasons, and organizers of the first International Conference on Men’s Issues haven’t said yet whether it will be moved to another hotel and conference center.
“At this time, they are not booked with us,” Larry Brown, manager of the DoubleTree, said this morning. He declined to elaborate on the cancelation.
There’s nothing on A Voice for Men about this latest development, though Esmay hinted during his Fox News appearance that they were possibly going to reconsider the Doubletree. But as of right now, AVFM is still selling tickets, as if the Doubletree convention is still a going concern.
Are they going to try to book the convention elsewhere? Or are they going to take the $29,000 they raised for “security” and, I dunno, send Esmay to a better stylist?
One other, ah, interesting detail in the Motor City Muckraker story:
When asked Tuesday whether the event would be moved, an organizer responded: “The DoubleTree GM (general manager) actually said that he has ‘feminist phobia’ and sort of laughed but in a nervous way. So its being discussed.”
It’s questionable whether this conversation ever occurred because the general manager is a woman.
Yeah. Seems like a lot of things about this convention have been pretty questionable from the start.
UPDATE: Well, one thing’s a bit clearer now, though. I called the Detroit Police and they confirmed that the Doubletree did indeed report to them that it had received threats. Who sent them, we still don’t know, but I think we can all agree that whether the threats came from some misguided feminist or “progressive” or from an MRA trying to stir shit and make feminists look bad, whoever made the threatening calls is a shithead who deserves to face the legal consequences for what they did.
UPDATE 2: According to the Detroit News, Elam says they’ve got another venue:
“We have scheduled another venue and will make an announcement on the site this evening,” group founder Paul Elam said in an email Wednesday.
So far no announcement on AVFM; I’ll post about it when there is one.
