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Fox News host Jessie Watters channels Warren Farrell (and NWOslave) with inane comments on the government as a substitute husband
Fox News host Jessie Watters: seemed to be channeling Warren Farrell with some particularly obtuse remarks he made recently on the Fox show “Outnumbered” on the “single ladies” vote.
Hillary Clinton needs the single ladies vote. I call them ‘The Beyoncé Voters’ — the single ladies. Obama won single ladies by 76% last time, and made up about a quarter of the electorate. They depend on government because they’re not depending on their husbands. They need contraception, health care, and they love to talk about equal pay.
If we ignore the implicit racism of his castigating “Beyonce voters” for being welfare “takers,” Watters is more or less rehashing an old, bad argument that Farrell made in The Myth of Male Power. In a section of the book called “Government as Substitute Husband,” Farrell wrote that “when divorces left women without husband-as-savior, many women looked for substitute saviors … .”
One Last Damn AVFM Conference Update: Man With a Camera Edition
It wasn’t this guy.
One last AVFM Conference update, with links to two more stories about that historic event.
The first, a gently skeptical Washington Post story by Monica Hesse titled, with a certain irony, “Men’s rights activists, gathering to discuss all the ways society has done them wrong.”
The whole thing is worth reading. My favorite bit:
One presenter, a military veteran speaking on the treatment of veterans returning from war, put up a PowerPoint slide alleging that 70 percent of men returning from war get divorced, and 90 percent do so within five years. When asked about the source of this statistic, he said, “That particular statistic is from my personal observations. I’m just speaking here as a dude.”
Ah, the prestigious Journal of Statistical Dudeness!
The second, well, it’s a bit more disturbing. DarkHorseSwore – a regular in the AgainstMensRights subreddit who raised money to go to Detroit to cover the convention only to be turned away at the door – managed to finally get an audience with some of the conference attendees and organizers – after the convention, as they celebrated at a bar and then in a hotel lobby. She got this access because none of them knew who she was. (Eventually Dean Esmay showed up and had her escorted off the premises.)
Now DarkHorseSwore has set up a website – DarkHorseSwore.com – and has started posting about the strange 5 ½ hours she spent amongst the AVFMers. She tells the tale of a strange encounter with one of the Honey Badgers and then an even stranger tale of an even stranger encounter with an old man and his camera. You’ll have to go read it. Be warned: It’s creepy as hell.
Oh, and she picked up some amazing conference swag as well. And by “amazing” I mean “possibly the worst conference swag I’ve ever seen, I mean, what the hell, and also why are they all beige?”
A wooden necklace thingy, symbolizing who the hell knows what!
A “What Would Honey Badgers Do?” button!
And last but not least, a Shrink 4 Men chapstick! It’s minty!
The Vaginal Tingles of Feral Women: A selection of the worst comments on my YouTube videos so far
The reviews are in! (Note: This is not an actual video. Don’t click on it and expect it to play.)
As most regular readers already know, I’ve been putting up a new series of videos on YouTube, featuring animated versions of some of YouTube’s most notable woman-haters. Naturally, these videos have attracted some of the worst commenters on YouTube. For now, I’ve decided to keep the comments there more or less unmoderated, while recommending that those who want to have a conversation that doesn’t involve horrible YouTube commenters come here.
Partly that’s because I don’t have the energy to properly moderate the YouTube comments. And partly it’s because I want to see just how awful they’ll get, to see what MRAs and MGTOWs and others from their general neighborhood will say when there’s no one looking over their shoulder – whether that person is someone like me, or some MRA moderator weeding out the worst remarks so that their movement won’t look bad. (Or at least any worse than it already does.)
So far the results have been instructive. I’ve gotten a lot of supportive comments, and even some reasonably thoughtful ones from some critics. But I’ve also gotten abusive comments and weird misogynistic manifestos.
Here are some of my favorites from the latter two categories.
And yes, I’m putting a TRIGGER WARNING on what follows. Lots of talk about rape, in particular.
With A Voice for Men’s conference over, Paul Elam has found a new woman to hate.
Paul Elam: Voice of reason in the gender debate?
You’ll all be glad to hear that Paul Elam has returned to normal. Well, normal for him.
After several days of doing his best impression of someone who isn’t a rage-filled attention misogynist, he’s back to his old woman-bashing self. You’ll also be happy to learn that he’s found a brand new woman to hate: Time reporter Jessica Roy, who is apparently quite stinky.
I’ve heard rumors that most females are stinky, actually.
Roy, who is covering the conference for Time, hasn’t even published her account yet. Her crimes so far? She tweeted some appalling quotes from some of the talks at the conference and made clear that she was not having a good time amongst the assembled assholes human rights activists. A selection:
The Chuckles Turned to Guffaws: AVFM conference Saturday wrapup
Janet Bloomfield PRs up a storm.
Well, the AVFM conference is over. I thought I’d post links to some of the media coverage today. I’m not sure Paul Elam and co have quite attained the level of respectability they were going for with the conference. It probably didn’t help that their PR gal, Janet Bloomfield, kept posting about “whores” and then, during the final panel discussion, delivered a passionate defense of “doxxing.”
Anyway, here’s the press coverage today:
Antifeminist DV guru Erin Pizzey: “If you are not in fear of your life, you are not suffering [from Domestic Violence].”
AVFM lifetime achievement award winner Erin Pizzey
At A Voice for Men’s conference yesterday, antifeminist crusader Erin Pizzey was given “a special award for her tireless work with ALL the victims of domestic violence.” Due to the amazing public relations work of AVFM’s spokeswoman for the conference, I don’t know what the award was called, so let’s just assume it was the World’s Greatest Erin Pizzey Award.
Whatever the award was called, the notion that Pizzey works, tirelessly or otherwise, on behalf of “ALL the victims of domestic violence” is demonstrably false. Indeed, she has argued vociferously against extending DV protection to all victims.
In an op-ed she wrote for The Daily Mail in 2011, Pizzey declared herself “horrified” that the British government would consider extending domestic violence protection to those subjected to “emotional bullying and ‘coercive control’” as well as actual physical abuse.
Her “argument” may be triggering for abuse survivors, so I’m putting all of her quotes below the jump.
AVFM Conference Open Thread: One journalist says he was molested; another was called “whore” by AVFM PR rep
The capacity crowd at the press conference at the AVFM conference; from Metrotimes.
If anyone feels compelled to discuss the AVFM conference, do it here.
I’ll post links to any articles and blog posts and interesting tweets and pretty much anything of note I see about it; if you run across any, feel free to post them in the comments and I can add them to the post.
Here’s the live audio stream for the conference, which is off the air. And the video stream, which isn’t working at the moment. Apparently they’ve packed up for the day. (Friday, that is.)
There was no protest, as the organizers of the earlier protest called for a boycott
The official twitter hashtag is #icmi14. For some wonderful Janet Bloomfield PR professionalism, see @JudgyBitch1 and @icmi14.
Highlights so far:
Hatemongering Bigots Are All Alike, Misandrist: The Dean Esmay Story
Dean Esmay choosing his words: Sometimes it’s hard to decide whether to go with “hatemongering bigot” or “bigot hatemonger.”
It’s Twitter Thursday here on We Hunted the Mammoth! Which is my way of saying that I spent last night poking around in the Twitterings of some of the A Voice for Men crowd. And I’ve decided that, as much as I enjoy Judgy B’s passive-aggressive evasiveness and schoolyard taunts, I think I like Dean Esmay’s tweets better.
Why? Because he tweets as if at any moment his head might literally explode.
Let’s take a look, shall we, at this selection of tweets from Mr. Esmay I gathered up last night. I have taken the liberty of highlighting some, well, let’s just call them recurring motifs.
If you missed me on Al Jazeera America, they’re rerunning the show today at 12:30 PM ET
Your Martin Luther King impression just isn’t cutting it, dude.
The human rights visionary looked down at what he had just written and smiled. Would these be the words he was remembered for?
Thomas Jefferson had that line about all men being created equal. It was bullshit, of course, but people ate that crap up. Martin Luther King had that thing about his kids not being judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. That was pretty good, he had to admit. People love cute stories about kids.
Gandhi had that thing, how did it go? That thing about everyone laughing at you, and fighting, and then you win something? That wasn’t quite it, but Gandhi was kind of a wuss, anyway. Would people even remember that dopey skinny dude in a diaper in a hundred years?
He chuckled quietly to himself.
They would certainly remember him, he thought. And they would remember the words he had tapped out on his laptop shortly before midnight that fateful summer night, on the eve of the historic conference that would, he knew, change the world forever.
One day, he was sure, these three sentences – well, two sentences and a sentence fragment, to be more precise – would be etched in stone.
He reached down, and clicked “Tweet.”
So anyway, just a reminder: if you missed me on Al Jazeera America’s The Stream on Tuesday, facing off against AVFM’s Robert O’Hara, they’re rerunning the show today at 12:30 PM ET.
It’s only on TV, though, not online. Click here to see if you get Al Jazeera America on your TV provider.
DON’T protest the AVFM Conference in St. Clair Shores, say the organizers of original June 7th action
The June 7th protest. Original photo by Steve Nealing; click on pic for more.
Keep your distance from A Voice for Men’s conference at its new location in St. Clair Shores.
That’s the basic message the organisers of the original June 7th protest against the AVFM conference want to get out to anyone thinking of protesting the conference this Friday and Saturday. In an open letter posted on Amanda Levitt’s Fat Body Politics, the original organizers urge would-be protesters to boycott the conference and stay out of St. Clair Shores.
While the original organizers reaffirm their opposition to the conference and to “the horrific and vile hatred that A Voice for Men spreads on their website,” they are concerned about the safety of anyone who might be considering protesting:
We have had numerous people reach out to us to let us know of the very real danger we could be in by protesting. Due to concerns for physical safety we have decided the best way to oppose the conference that is now going on in St. Clair Shores is to keep our distance. With AVFM’s history of attempting to provoke protestors, harassing individuals by following them to their cars or home, and filming or photographing them in order to release their private information online we don’t feel that protesting at the VFW hall could keep people reasonable safe.
While there may be others who decide to protest the conference, we want to make it perfectly clear that there are real concerns for safety. If you are planning to protest the conference, please make sure the people who are coming are informed enough about the kind of vicious tactics that AVFM has used to derail and trivialize the response to their own ideology.
Be in solidarity with us this weekend as we ensure the safety of our organizers and other protesters by tweeting to #NoMRA about why this conference and the beliefs of AVFM shouldn’t be tolerated.
Emphasis added.
I should say that I agree with this approach: DON’T protest AVFM’s Conference in St. Clair Shores this weekend. Speak out against AVFM’s misogyny, and against its efforts to intimidate its critics — on social media and any other way you can.
But unless you are covering the conference as a journalist, don’t go to St. Clair Shores. Not only do you risk being doxxed and harassed by AVFM and its supporters, but you also will be giving AVFM what it wants: a confrontation, and yet another excuse to play the victim.
Make no mistake: AVFM and its supporters want to see protesters at their conference this weekend. Don’t give them what they want.
You will be far more effective critic of AVFM if, instead of confronting them in person, you speak up online, through letters to the editor, and by spreading the word in other peaceful ways that don’t involve actually going to the conference.
I don’t personally oppose AVFM’s conference taking place, but I think it’s very important to show the world what AVFM, its supporters, and its invited speakers really stand for.
I urge you to do what you can to publicize the video I helped to put together in collaboration with Mancheeze.com that highlights the hatefulness of a number of those scheduled to speak at AVFM’s conference– link to it, embed it on your blog, whatever you can do.
You can also help to spread the word by posting the graphic I’ve pasted in below, after the jump, which collects together the statements quoted in the video. You can click on it for a larger version.
