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For A Voice for Men, and its Edmonton offshoot, terrifying women is a form of “human rights activism.”
Men’s Rights Edmonton activist at work
So the self-described “human rights activists” at A Voice for Men have found three more women to harass. Here’s the story, which for many of you will have a depressingly familiar ring:
Members of Men’s Rights Edmonton, a small group that is for all intents and purposes a local chapter of A Voice for Men, has been putting up pictures targeting Lise Gotell, the chair of women’s and gender studies at the University of Alberta. The pictures, which seem inspired by “Wanted” posters of yore, feature a large portrait of Gotell and the caption:
Men’s Rights Kontroversial Komik Kavalkade
Want to earn yourself some quick karma points on Reddit? It’s easy! Just post some terrible misogynistic comic and wait for the inevitable upvotes. Like this one, which combines some standard-issue victim-blaming rape apologism with a bit of racism and serves it all up in terribly drawn cartoon form, and collect dozens of upvotes!
A Voice for Men’s Paul Elam blames rape chants at Canadian schools on feminism
Paul Elam: If he hears any more about rape culture, he might possibly lose it.
You might not think that student orientation events would be an appropriate venue for chants celebrating the rape of underage girls. But such chants have apparently been something of a tradition at not one but two Canadian schools — and possibly more? Last week, a scandal erupted at the University of British Columbia after word got out that an orientation event at its Saunder School of Business had included a chant on this particular theme, led by orientation leaders from the Commerce Undergraduate Society.
According to one woman who disgustedly live-tweeted the event, it went something like this:
Y-O-U-N-G at UBC, we like ‘em young, Y is for your sister, O is for oh so tight, U is for underage, N is for no consent, G is for go to jail.
Meanwhile, in Halifax, someone made a video — and posted it to YouTube — of student orientation leaders at Saint Mary’s University chanting a nearly identical chant.
Naturally, noted, er, human rights activist Paul Elam of A Voice for Men felt compelled to weigh in on the issue. He started off by expressing his deep disgust … with having to hear anything about the issue at all:
I swear if I read one more outraged “report” — aka feverish, paranoid rant — that twists something stupid into “evidence” of a “rape culture,” I am going to just lose it.
Yes, how outrageous that a chant joking about raping underage girls at an official school orientation event could possibly be construed as contributing in any way to rape culture! So sorry that your delicate sensitivities were offended, Paul.
After some more predictable histrionics on this “hyper-hipster-hysteria” from Mr. Elam, he got to his main point: blaming feminists for the rape chants.
No, really.
I am an older guy. I find it interesting, given that I came from a more “patriarchal” generation, that something like this when I was 18 would have been unthinkable. Why? Because other men, especially older ones, would have pulled those young people aside and said, “Hey, we don’t do that around here.” That would have been that, as they say, if it had even happened in the first place.
We can thank feminists for this. Through policy and governance they have eroded positive male role models, and male authority, right out of the culture. After feminist undermining of the family, removing fathers from the lives of children and demonizing male heroes, we have a population of young people, especially young men, growing more socially feral with each new generation.
And now what do we see? Feminists running around everywhere telling men they need to tell each other, “Don’t rape. Don’t abuse women. Don’t this. Don’t that.” …
You can’t assault the identity of half the human race, marginalize and disempower them, which is exactly what feminism has done, and expect anything in return but what you are getting.
In other words: You gals asked for it.
Paul Elam, you are rape culture.
Men’s Rights Redditor on Gaming: “It would be nice if women/feminists … fucked off and created their own thing rather than moving into a men’s space … .”
George Eliot: Should she have been allowed to play Call of Duty?
So the other day the fellas in the Men’s Rights subreddit were having another thoughtful and nuanced discussion about OMG WOMEN PLAYING VIDEO GAMES GET OUT GIRL GERMS EWWWW GAMING IS FOR MEN ONLY HELP HELP WE’RE BEING OPPRESSED and the always insightful IHaveALargePenis offered this little suggestion to the “feminists/women” of the world:
Huh. So in return I guess men would agree to hand science fiction over to the ladies — after all, it was one of them, Mary Shelley, who basically invented the whole genre back in 1818 with her mad-scientist classic Frankenstein.
Mr. Penis also gets bonus points for explicitly conflating women and feminists — most MRAs do this only implicitly, and then pretend they haven’t — and wins this month’s “Really? You Really Just Said That?” MRA Irony Award for declaring in his second paragraph that “people don’t actively insult [women] or tell them they can’t [get involved in nerdy pursuits] for simply being women” after he JUST DID EXACTLY THAT ONE PARAGRAPH EARLIER.
One brave commenter responded to Mr. Penis’ screed with a detailed list of infliential women in the gaming industry. Amazingly, this comment wasn’t downvoted into oblivion, though it is worth noting that it got considerably fewer net upvotes that Mr. Penis’ masterpiece.
The thread, naturally, is full of poop from other contributors as well. Cthulusbaby not only doesn’t want women playing or expressing opinions about games; he doesn’t even want imaginary women in his games. No Manic Pixel Dream Girls for him!
Also, he seems to be under the impression that there are no men in romance movies.*
Acolmiztli, meanwhile, sheds a tear for the nerds that came before him:
Evidently the only way to rectify this past injustice is to do the same thing to women today? It’s the MEN’S RIGHTS WAY!
And hey, if women don’t like it, well, they can always just hide their gender identity. (On the Internet no one knows you’re George Eliot.)
PROBLEM SOLVED!
Sometimes all it takes to solve these silly lady problems is some good old-fashioned male ingenuity,
H/T to Againstmensrights on Reddits for pointing out Mr. Penis’ lovely remark, and making the same point about science fiction.
–
* Note to extremly literal-minded readers: I am not actually suggesting that Cthulusbaby thinks there are no men in romance movies. It is just that the way he is framing the issue is so ridiculous he might as well think that.
@Fidelbogen sez: “We needn’t treat feminists fairly or ethically. Underhanded tricks r the order of the day.”
Silly Fidelbogen! Tricks are for kids!
It’s labor day here in the US of A, a day for picnics, parades honoring our nation’s workers, and going through Fidelbogen’s timeline on Twitter looking for especially obtuse tweets from the always obtuse Men’s Renaissance Agitator and would-be philosopher-king of the Men’s Rights movement.
Yes, I know we just did Fidelbogen the other day, but we’re doing him again.
Because it’s my blog, that’s why!
Men’s Rights Activist adds racism to the mix: “Why Black Women are More Repulsive than any Other”
Michelle Obama is not impressed with your argument.
Christian J., the blogger behind What Men Are Saying About Women and the inventor of the infamous MRA two-dot ellipsis, has always been an open racist as well as a misogynist, letting drop horrific comments from time to time on why he thinks black women are the worst kind of women in the world.
But today he’s sort of outdone himself with a post titled Why Black Women are More Repulsive than any Other..
Christian lays out his thesis statement in his first sentence:
I have made no effort to hide my disgust about black females as they do really deserve every criticism they get.
What follows is a largely incoherent stream-of consciousness rant unencumbered by logic or the correct use of language.
Christian starts off by attacking “black “Lesbian” females” and “Oprah “Find the Victim” Winfrey,” whom he describes as a
selfish, self-serving, anti-male bigot and organiser of female only schools in Africa. A true racist bigot in every sense of the word.
Yes, the author of “Why Black Women are More Repulsive than any Other..” did just call Oprah a racist bigot.
Apparently immune to irony, Christian J continues:
The facts about black women is even more horrendous than one could even assume. They developed themselves as being so arrogant and self-serving, that even black men avoid them like the plague. …
The fact that they have constantly hit out against black men as being either gays or hoods or in jail, leaving them pregnant (that’s a favourite with women, always blame someone else for one’s own stupidity) and refusing to man up when required. They vilified black men at every opportunity. …
The black man’s response was huge. They enjoyed handing their oversized asses back to them in popular songs like rap and other genres.
You will no doubt have noticed by now that Christian J. does not seem to understand what words mean or how language works, exactly.
They reduced the black female down to the levels they could understand and they also stated in no uncertain terms, what black females could do with themselves while they went off and picked females from other races to replace those high and mighty, self-elevated edifices and phoenixes.
Edifices? Phoenixes? Is he just pulling random words out of the dictionary now?
Poetic justice and it was the appropriate feedback they required to put them back in the box where they originally came from and hopefully teach them some level of humility.
The … box … they came from? What the fuck is he even talking about here?
That did not work of course as their ego now had grown even bigger that they themselves could no longer control. …
So what is the problem with these black females ?
They’re surrounded by assholes like you?
A Voice for Men falsely accuses a male feminist blogger of being a “confessed rapist,” because “karma is a BITCH.”
A Voice for Men’s Paul Elam: Serial False Accuser
When is a false rape accusation not a false rape accusation? When it’s leveled against a feminist man.
That, in any case, is the logic behind an appalling post on A Voice for Men attempting to smear a male feminist blogger named Jason Thibeault, who posts on FreeThoughtBlogs as Lousy Canuck, by proclaiming him a rapist.
The post is a typical bit of AVFM “satire” — that is, sophistry — arguing that “by his own feminist standards” Thibeault is a rapist … because he was once accused of rape by a girlfriend, as he wrote about in a recent post. And since feminists believe that ALL accusations of rape are true, AVFM’s Birric Forcella argues, Thibeault is thus a “confessed rapist.”
Obviously, this argument is ludicrous on its face. Feminists don’t believe that all accusations of rape are automatically true. And Thibeault, for his part, says that he was falsely accused.
This doesn’t stop AVFM from giving their piece the frankly libelous headline: “FreeThoughtBlogs’ Jason Thibeault, confessed rapist.”
AVFM may defend its post as “satire” — they have a rather expansive definition of the word — but that headline is pure libel. It’s false — and would be so even if the accusations of rape were true, as Thibeault (who’s responded to the AVFM post here) maintains his innocence.
And AVFM’s intent is clearly malicious. In the first comment to the piece, AVFM founder and publisher Paul Elam declares frankly, and revealingly, “Karma is a BITCH.”
Thibeault’s real crime, in AVFM’s eyes, is that he has publicly supported women who have come forward in recent weeks to accuse prominent skeptic writer Michael Shermer of rape and sexual assault.
And so they have responded by making what is an unequivocally false accusation against him in a headline on their site.
Of course, this isn’t the first time A Voice for Men has falsely accused someone of something based on bad evidence or no evidence at all.
In April of this year, Elam (along with a number of other MRAs and an assortment of White Supremacists as well) worked himself into an uproar over a blog post from an alleged feminist allegedly working in a college admission office who claimed she was routinely trashing applications from white males.
Though even the most rudimentary amount of fact-checking would have revealed that the woman they blamed for the blog had nothing to do with it, she had her contact information posted online by MRAs and others, leaving her open to harassment and widespread vilification. Elam contributed to the hubbub by posting a vituperative post identifying the wrong woman by name — and only after being called on his mistake by numerous other MRAs did his finally retract the post.
You can read about the whole appalling affair here.
Elam has also made false accusations against little old me. In yet another case of libel-by-headline, he accused Jessica Valenti and me of being “child abusers” … because we’re feminists. (Seriously, that was the entire basis of his accusation.)
And at one point, either lying outright or misled by a troll, he put forth the absurd conspiracy theory that I was somehow responsible for an appalling Reddit forum known as the Beatingwomen subreddit.
In his post on the subject, he claimed to have “intel” from two separate sources that “confirm[ed]” my involvement in the subreddit — he provided none of this evidence — and promised that “further word” on the subject would be forthcoming.
Of course, this evidence never materialized — because it was fraudulent and/or imaginary. Elam dropped the subject. I had and have no connection to the subreddit.
And not long ago, AVFM’s Dean Esmay very publicly accused its former Canadian News Director Kristina Mendez (AKA TheWoolyBumblebee) of (maybe, possibly) running off with the money she collected for a center devoted to the memory of Earl Silverman, a Canadian MRA who committed suicide partially out of frustration over the difficulties he had in funding the DV shelter for men he ran out of his home. The folks at AVFM have admitted quite plainly that they have no evidence of wrongdoing here.
Apparently, AVFM’s strategy is to prove that false accusations are common by making as many of them as they possibly can.
EDIT: Added the bit about Valenti and me.
Fidelbogen: Men’s Rights Activists! Forget about DV shelters for men. Focus on the important issue: yelling at feminists
Men’s Rights Edmonton doing important human rights work by protesting Slut Walk
Our old nemesis Fidelbogen — the Would-Be Counter-Feminist Philosopher King — has taken on a dire, if altogether hypothetical, threat to the men’s rights movement as we know it today: the danger that actual activism that benefits men in the real world will get in the way of the feminist bashing that he thinks is job #1 for all good MRAs.
As he argues in a recent post:
Doing good things for men – opening DV shelters, men’s centers, passing male-friendly laws, and so on – is all very excellent and fine, but it does not attack the root of the problem.
This is kind of a remarkable statement for him to make, given that the Men’s Rights movement that Fidelbogen has attached himself to — or at least its very vocal online contingent — has so far succeeded in opening precisely zero DV shelters and/or men’s centers and has successfully lobbied for zero “male-friendly” laws.
Indeed, it’s only in recent months that any MRAs active online have managed to raise even a miniscule percentage of the money it will take to open much less operate a single shelter for men.
But apparently Fidey is worried that even these paltry efforts from MRAs will get in the way of the noble task of yelling about feminists. As he puts it, in LARGE BOLD TYPE so you know he’s extra serious:
Fidey, I don’t think you need to worry for a minute that MRAs are going to actually accomplish anything in the real world. And you can quote me on that,
The Cartoon Artistry of Victor Zen, Men’s Human Rights Activist Human
I think I have a new favorite MRA. Sorry, this one’s an MHRA, because he spends all his time hanging out on A Voice for Human Men. (Oh, it’s still just A Voice for Men? Then Why did they put that H for “Human” in that other acronym?)
Anyway, his name is Victor Zen. And according to Victor’s MHRA Resume — and yes he really does have one — he is quite an awesome MHRA, I mean, just consider these accomplishments:
AVFM Forum Moderator (4/7/2013-7/1/2013)
- Enforced AVFM policy in the AVFM forums
- Maintained unity in MHRA community
- Encouraged peaceful online activism
I mean, it totally sounds like he was one kickass AVFM policy-enforcing, MHRA-unity-maintaining, peaceful online activism encouraging moderator for nearly three months!
If I were hiring any MHRAs, I would definitely put Victor Zen’s MHResume (see what I did there) at the top of the virtual pile.
Oh, but that’s not all! Since then, Victor has been doing a bang-up job as AVFM Backup System Administrator, which I assume means he system administrates the hell out of AVFM whenever it backs itself into a corner, which it sort of does pretty much all of the time. (I think. I’m not really up on these sorts of technical things.)
But that’s not the part of Victor’s MHResume I want to celebrate today. For if you scroll down to the bottom you will find a list of his real accomplishments:
- First day as MHRA: December 5th, 2012
- Posters designed: 8
- Videos produced: 38
- Cartoons drawn: 18
- Articles written: 27
- YT Subscribers: 120+
Woah, woah, what’s that about cartoons?
That’s right, he drew EIGHTEEN MOTHERFUCKING CARTOONS. Not eight. Not eighty. EIGHTEEN.
That cartoon at the top of this post. That’s just a taste of just ONE of these EIGHTEEN cartoons.
You can can see the loving craftmanship — sorry, craftsMANship — he brings to the task.
Let’s take a look at the rest of them, which have been helpfully posted for us in a bunch of AVFM forum threads and on his own site. Be prepared for some violence and maybe a teensy bit of hate, because the TRUTH IS NOT PRETTY. Also, neither is his terrible drawing style.
Also, one of the cartoons features a talking vagina.
Here you can see the ironic conclusion to the story started in the two frames above, as well as an assortment of other cartoons posted under the heading Victor.Zen On Absurdity via Inequality.
And here is Victor.Zen On the MHRA’s Enemy.
And Victor.Zen On the Screech of Feminism.
And wait there’s more!
Victor has posted some of his favorites on his own site as well. (He starts with the vagina one; apparently he’s quite proud of his passing familiarity with that sexual organ.)
He’s got posters, too.
As well as an explanation for why the word “mangina” is totally not misogynistic, just like a simple descriptive term with no misogynistic overtones that means a dude who’s, you know, a “philogynic misandrist.”
A Phil a who now?
Real-World Man-activism: The photographic evidence
Above, a picture that’s been floating around online for a little while, helpfully meme-ified by Manception on the AgainstMensRights subreddit.
Below, a picture of an anti-abortion protestor at the Texas State Capitol that Amanda Marcotte posted on Pandagon a while back under the title Silent Mansplaining. Which pretty much sums it up.
Have any of you run across any similar photographic evidence of real-world man-activism you’d like to share?
