Paul Elam has apparently become something of a comedian – though not on purpose. In his latest post on A Voice for Men, he takes on the atheist community for being too in thrall to (wait for it) feminism.
I’ll let him explain:
[T]hey are too religious. Yes, I mean that literally. For when you wipe away all the bombastic bellowing about empiricism and the strident mocking of those who choose a life of faith, what you are left with is a population of people that surrender their reason and cognition as though they were at gunpoint; that hit their knees as fast as any Catholic…to worship at the altar of feminism.
His proof? Several years ago someone at Atheist Nexus posted a link to a Men’s News Daily column of his, and – get this! – some feminists responded!
You can go here to see all the horrible things these evil cultish feminist atheists said. Like, for example:
I guess I’m a feminist, but I really like men and these are some of the things I love about them:
Protectiveness is a positive trait in men that women who want to have babies look for. We also like passion and some recklessness, but you won’t get me to admit that to my daredevil husband…..
Confidence; men usually have more of it and it is mostly a postive trait.
The ability to make decisions quickly.
Physical strength and endurance are helpful in many family situations. Ahem.
Penises. You have them, lots of us like them. I know it’s not technically a “trait”, but I had to put that in.
You can practically taste the man-hate there!
Elam, I should note, ignores that comment. No, what’s got his underpants in a wad is this comment:
The whole web site mensnewsdaily.com is a sad overreaction to the growing equality of women in society.
Evidently he’s been stewing about this remark for more than two years.
In fact, if you go and take a look at it, the discussion on Atheist Nexus wasn’t … really … all that feminist. Yes, several people criticized Elam and mensnewsdaily as “extreme,” but one of those people also criticized radical feminists as similarly “extreme.” Some of the commenters explicitly identified themselves as feminist; others explicitly criticized feminism. Nonetheless, the discussion somehow managed to be the politest conversation about gender I’ve run across online in a long, long time.
Seriously. Go take a look at it. Then consider how Elam sums it all up:
Apparently they can’t even handle 50 years of loud mouthed arts majors without drinking the Kool-aide and going brain dead. There was scarcely a voice among them that did not wallow in the ersatz enlightenment so common to feminist ideologues.
And then he moves on to whatever this is:
Feminism, as far as ideology goes, has been very effective at using human reproductive realities to co-opt other movements. In fact, from the American Civil Rights Movement to Occupy Wall Street, feminism has progressed without paying its own way, but rather by sending women in to other social arenas and wheedling men into supporting them. The Borg would be proud if they had emotions. Resistance is Futrelle.
Ho ho! Futrelle rhymes with futile! Sort of! Lest Elam and co. become too overwhelmed with pride for this clever wordplay, I should note that some junior high schoolers beat him to the punch back in the late 70s. Or maybe it was grade schoolers. I really don’t remember.
I’m less clear about the rest of his argument about “human reproductive realities.” Apparently it’s a fancy way of saying that dudes only support feminism so they can get laid. Another highly original notion.
Elam’s other piece of evidence that feminism has taken over the atheist community? PZ Myers.
He quotes this evil athio-feminazi ideologue arguing that if male atheists want to get more women involved in the atheist community, they should:
Learn to shut up and listen. Seriously. You want women to find your organization pleasant and interesting and worth contributing to? Then don’t form panels full of men trying to figure out what women want, talking over women who try to get a word in edgewise, belittling women’s suggestions with jokes, and trying to determine how We Well-Meaning Men can give Those Women what we think they want. You are assuming an authority and presuming that it is in your power to give it to the minority, when what you should be doing is deferring to that minority and giving them your attention, letting them speak and shape your organization.
God – or, if you prefer, Imaginary Entity – forbid that male atheists actually listen to women explain why they might feel unwelcome in the mostly male (and not particularly feminist friendly) atheist community.
You really think feminism has taken over the atheist community? Take a look at Reddit’s Atheism subreddit, where, recently, a woman who recently described how she had been raped was attacked as a liar and a slut in a thread filled with rape jokes. Or go back a little further to the Elevatorgate brouhaha, where an atheist blogger who politely mentioned in a podcast that she doesn’t really like being hit on by strange men in elevators at 4 AM drew the ire of countless angry atheist dudes, including Richard Fucking Dawkins himself? (In case you want to revisit that bit of nastiness, I wrote about “Elevatorgate” in several blog posts; here are some reactions from decidedly non-feminist atheists.)
This is a movement that “worship[s] at the altar of feminism[?]” Not really seeing it, dude.
But again, congrats on the whole Futrelle/futile thing. Genius!
Take heart, weirdo. There are tons of misogynists in the Atheist, erm, movement. Believe me, I learned the ugly way.
I mean, I wasn’t attacked personally, just was witness to a shit-ton of crappy privilege-inspired behavior.
Yeah, Comrade PhysioProf is a dude who comments on I Blame The Patriarchy; say what you will about him, but I don’t think he’s likely to call someone Twatson.
And there’s nothing quite like reading a nice article on cognitive biases, looking into the comments, and discovering someone mentioning offhandedly “we know, of course, that women are attracted to men who ignore them.” >.>
@ozymandias42: There are literally billions of men ignoring me right now! They don’t even know I exist! I am so attracted to all of them, and it is exhausting.
“Resistance is Futrelle”: The Spearhead/A Voice For Men/The Men’s Rights Subreddit’s weird obsession with David and his sight really highlights how much of a non-movement the MRM is. When I check Feministing or Feministe, I don’t see posts dedicated to a site about mocking misandry, or references to the owner of such a site slipped into posts. Hell, I rarely even see anything about Paul Elam or any other MRM leaders.
The front page of Feministe currently has two posts about “He Man Woman-Haters” out of 11, with the other talking about Proposition 8, asexuals in the sex positive movement, defining rape (the only one that actually appears to mention the MRA), Uganda’s anti-gay laws, relationships, and Super Bowl Commericals.
Yet the MRAs obsess over a site that exists solely to mock them. Probably because there’s not much else to do when your movement consists of complaining online.
Ugh. I meant site, not sight.
THAAWWWW, someone’s been reading this blog religiously!
Yeah, I see I messed up with Prof. ERV is… well, pretty normal, really. Just another treehouse hanger-on.
Right, MRAL, the privileged were just chomping at the bit to help, when evil ICumWhenIKillMen scared them off. Grats on a new record for a flounce though.
Think what you want to think, Rutee, but if you’re not going to denounce people like “ICumWhenIKillMen”, you have permanently lost the right to ask non-feminist men and women to stop saying similar things, or to call out men/women who say similar things.
Oops.
“Nonetheless, the discussion somehow managed to be the politest conversation about gender I’ve run across online in a long, long time.”
I think that’s precisely what Elam hated about it. He’s ranted at length before about how polite conversation and intellectual debate as practiced by Farrell has gotten the MRM nowhere. He’d clearly rather prefer trolling and making violent threats.
I’m going to take a walk in the falling snow and cheer myself up.
Re: ICumWhenIKillMen – The policy on SRS is that oppressive jokes toward the privileged (and only toward the privileged) are encouraged. People say “cracker” and “honky,” they make jokes about dicks being ugly and people being dickheads, they make fun of straight people and cis people. The idea is to give privileged people an idea of what it feels like.
Reddit has entire communities devoted to making women feel the way that one username makes men feel. The SRS logic is: how are men going to know what that’s like if they never get a little taste of it?
@Holly:
I wonder how the MRAs would react if someone started a “Beat and Harm Men” subreddit.
There is a “Beat and Harm Women” subreddit? That’s not a joke? o_0′
Kyrie – r/beatingwomen. It’s not a joke.
I mean, of course it’s a joke, ha ha, get a sense of humor you uptight feminist. But no, it’s not a joke.
Kyrie: Yep. r/beatingwomen.
Holly: I dunno… that makes me uncomfortable. :/ I mean, cracker and honky are cool, whatever, but “dicks are ugly” jokes reinforce the patriarchy too and people really shouldn’t be mocked for their identities, regardless of what the identity is.
@Crumbelievable, people would think it was just HILARIOUS.
And I hope SRS realizes that “dicks being ugly” is in fact mainstream, so they’re being kind of redundant there.
Finally, Holly, my response? Meh. It’s some asshole on the Internet. All you’ve accomplished is to destroy your precious moral high ground. So, thanks, ICumWhenIKillMen! I’ll keep using the c-word, thanks for the implicit permission!
We’re also operating under the assumption that men are the privileged group here, which they’re not. I’m fine with the cracker and honky thing, that seems an interesting sociological experiment.
Ozy – It’s not something I participate in, because I try to be a little warmer and fuzzier than that, but I understand it.
I understand it because I’ve had so many conversations with straight white men–and I don’t even mean overtly bigoted people, I mean perfectly nice guys–who didn’t really understand what it was like to be an oppressed group because they had no personal experience with it.
There was a discussion just today on my blog between some straight white cis men who were claiming that “identity politics” is needlessly divisive and why can’t we all just be the same, and absolutely everyone who wasn’t a straight white cis man pointing out that they’d never been given the chance to be “normal,” that wasn’t an option they’d rejected but one they couldn’t have no matter how hard they tried to be assimilated and non-troublemaking. I don’t think these men were being disingenuous; I think they really had never had the experience of having an “other” identity that you can’t escape.
I don’t know how much man-hating jokes really give them that feeling (as opposed to just making them feel personally insulted, because they have no emotional box developed for “identity insulted”), but I understand the spirit of it.
Fuck ShitRedditSays. They can burn in hell.
Men in fact do understand what it’s like to be the marginalized, because (non-alpha) men are marginalized. Or men who don’t have great social skills. Or men who are ugly. You on the other hand are a female white person, so it is you that has had no direct experience with being oppressed.
And one its contributors is also mod on the MRA subreddit! What a shocking coincidence!
hthttp://manboobz.com/2011/11/30/and-the-redditor-of-the-day-award-goes-to-annarchist-no-really-it-actually-did-yesterday/
Guess ShitRedditSays would love to get their hate on for those two little boys (white, male) who got murdered by that Powell fuck. Bunch of lazy fucking dicks, I’d love to watch them jailed for hate speech, and that’s me being conservative.
I encourage all men to make it a point to link to SRS whenever they get called out by butthurt feminists for using misogynist language. I’m so fucking pissed off right now, it’s not funny. SRS can get frozen in the ninth circle of hell.
SRS is TELLING ME it’s worse to be an “oppressed group”, basically. It’s not. I would trade place with a random member “oppressed group” (especially a woman, not even an oppressed group), because the odds are 10000/1 I’d be better off. So fuck you, SRS, and that’s a very personal fuck you from me to each and every one of you. Not a group fuck you, but me individually, saying “fuck you” to everybody who contributes to or enjoys reading SRS.