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.
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?
And did we need NWO to show up with bullshit victim blaming? Really?
MRAL: Thank you for standing up – it might not feel like a lot, but sometimes all it takes is one pebble to start an avalanche.
MRAL: dix points
NWOS: null points
And the “violent neighbor” interprets every annoying thing as a direct threat, a personal insult, and otherwise perfectly crafted to annoy or aggravate him.
Because anything the annoying neighbor does is perfectly crafted torture, as opposed to, you know…being a twit, ignorant, not realizing that her actions are annoying?
Chiming in to thank MRAL for his decision. It is really appreciated.
Holy shit, it’s like Elam just proudly outed himself to be Chaotic Evil. This shit is vile. Do the AVfM folks actually understand that this is not a little game? That it is not fucking okay to be so nonchalant about purposefully trying to place real living people in danger because they posted a tasteless video?
So NWO is confessing to assaulting his neighbor? For being annoying? That would be surprising, except not at all.
*Fuuuu, John the Other, not Elam.
The Nordic guys Holly linked from Reddit sounded downright reasonable. Our MRAs could take lessons.
In NWO’s example, it is more like this:
The misogynist neighbor blows all of his leaves and throws all of his trash in a feminist’s yard. She puts up a fence and plants hedges, so in the middle of the night the misogynist neighbor plants his ladder against the fence and flings his waste into the feminist’s yard. She puts up security lights which he shoots out with a BB gun, so she hires a security company and gets a dog. The dog barks when the misogynist neighbor starts flinging his crap into the yard, so he blames his victim for her dog waking his kids.
When she burns HIS leaves and trash, some random gusts of wind touch the sensitive nose of the misogynist, and he decides that his best option is to burn down her house in retaliation for her reactions to his initial and continuing semi-criminal behavior.
Holly, yes it’s charming, in a sort of “irony has gone out for lunch and never returned again” manner. My favourite example of this is a poster from a pro-Islam demonstration cited by Richard Dawkins that had a similar level of disconnection between how and what it was asserting: “Behead those who say Islam is a violent religion!” I’d like to say the anecdote wasn’t true and the protestor couldn’t have been that unaware, but I suspect it’s too easily verifiable.
MRAL’s post is cheering in an otherwise dreary day.
@ MRAL – just want to chime in and tell you, you’re awesome to take a stand on this. Support, respect and admiration to you from this feminist!
@ NWO – God, am I glad I don’t live anywhere near you. You know, living in a big-city apartment building, I hear all kinds of stuff all the time: pounding rap music, not-NEARLY-ready-for-primetime opera tenors howling Puccini’s “Nessun dorma,” car alarms that go off for hours at a time, garbage trucks at four in the morning, etc.
It often annoys me, but I have never once (a) assumed it was all directed towards me personally, on purpose to make me nuts, or (b) decided that assaulting or killing my annoying neighbors would be an understandable, acceptable response to my discomfort.
NWO, you are just a pathetic, sickening creep, and I am eternally grateful to the universe that I am not you.
Thanks, MRAL.
@BigKitty:
I’ve already googled Elam out of curiosity and I’m quite relieved to find I don’t live in the same time zone as him.
@MRAL:
I agree with your view on it. Staying the heck away is the best idea right now, particularly if you think that authorities will be getting involved. Saying “No, that’s not right” is a good, moral stand to take, for which you get kudos from me. And hell, it is intensely practical if you avoid any trouble too.
I’m a little uncomfortable with giving MRAL a cookie for this.
I guess MRAs are so messed up as a group that it seems like a Herculean task to not support someone who targets women and threatens them with violence. Oh well.
Hey gang, I was just over at the fantastic What men are saying about women blog and I stumbled upon some juicy info. It seems the director over at the SCUM theater, Josefin von Zeipel Segerberg has also dabbled in a bit of straight hate. Hey that rhymes! It seems this gem of a mainstream feminist is also involved in a performance in celebration of “Straight Hate Day,” an attack on heterosexuality in Swedish culture.
She claims she just hates the promotion of heterosexual normalcy. Of course if I say I hate the promotion of LGBT normalcy, I’m a bigot and a hater. So what we have here is your average feminist actively promoting hatred of straight men, and that guy that got shot in the head looked awful white. We know everyone here hates whiteness, that’s a gimmie. Everyone one of you continually tosses out white man/male like it’s a foul curse.
I mean feminists don’t even hide their hatred of straight white men anymore and are shocked, shocked I tellz ya, if men so much as disagree. Anyhoo, I thought you’d enjoy this bit of relevant information on your…….equaltiy movement?
Assuming arguendo that there is a completely innocent Neighbor A who merely wants to be left alone by his malicious and intentionally reckless Neighbor B, there are about a million nonviolent things that Neighbor A can do to protect his property and his sanity before he resorts to violence, milkslave. Including trying to talk to the neighbor, bringing a grievance before his HOA board, filing for an injunction, bringing in a special interest group to help you try to enact change in local laws, or moving.
Someone who looked past all those options and resorted to violence would indeed deserve to be labeled violent. As do the folks at AVFM. Activism, not vigilanteism, is a correct way to produce change.
@spearhafoc
I think that it is a positive thing to give credit where credit is due, even if the person being given credit has never before earned credit, and maybe will never again earn any credit. One of the negative things about radical extremists is that they can never see anything positive in people who they have declared to be enemies. The folks here aren’t radical extremists, and therefore can grit their teeth and admit when someone who they generally dislike is on the right side of an issue.
Spearhafoc – MRAL is stubborn, often obnoxious, and quick to lapse into Tantrum Mode FUCK, but he’s not dumb, and I say give credit where it’s due.
I think it’s important not to treat any person as scorched earth from which nothing good can ever come.
…except NWO. (Who I’m guessing has actually not assaulted the neighbor, but is either fantasizing about it or he verbally raged out at her in a way that made him That Guy in his neighborhood. Try a polite letter followed if necessary by a civilly worded complaint with the city/town government, dude…)
Slavey:
It’s weird. This makes less sense than what he normally posts … but not much less.
Conversely, I have hope for MRAL. I’ll join the chorus, that realizing that major voices in the MRM say shit that’s really not okay is the first step, and that alone puts you miles ahead of people who haven’t realized it.
He’s young. You never know when a bit of encouragement might make a difference.
What makes me sad is the near-certainty that it won’t; that he’ll go right back to his old behavior within a day or two.
It doesn’t have to be that way, MRAL. You don’t have to be NWO or DKM when you grow up. Hanging out at MRA sites is just feeding your resentment and bitterness. Why don’t you try staying away for awhile? Hanging out with real people instead would be ideal (it’ll certainly blow all those MRA “all women are like this” delusions right out of the water), but the people here have tried to help you before.
I’m not looking for a cookie, but I’m just calling it as I see it. I think Elam is not all bad, but this is just really disillusioning for me. I really value internet anonymity, in fact, since MRAs’ viewpoints are out of the mainstream, it is MRAs who most benefit, we won’t face ridicule or whatever in the real world. Also, as said, I think Elam is destroying the website’s effectiveness from an MRA POV, because it has less weight if it’s just a political shit list, as opposed to, you know, an actual criminal registry.
I’m not going to go over and bitch to Elam anymore, though, because I’m sort of afraid he’ll put ME on RH for being a “collaborator” or some shit. I really feel like he’s gone a little nuts with power.
Spearhafoc: I can see where you’re coming from, but I disagree. Just getting past his own personal issues surrounding women to admit that an MRA has gone too far is a pretty big step for MRAL. If he can get from point A to point B on this, there’s hope that he’ll connect the dots on other issues. From previous experience I don’t old out a lot of hope, but I’ve seen people overcome worse prejudices. It may be stupid, but I have to have some hope for this tired old world…
MRAL: Unless it’s put up by actual law enforcement, sites like ‘register her’ will never be anything but political shit lists.
I would rather praise someone for doing the right thing then have to once again criticize them.