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!
Still, NWO likes Star Wars novels.
Part of me feels for MRAL, because I remember being young and stupid and unable to comprehend how I could have privilege if I wasn’t actively trying to oppress anyone, and that feminist meant hatred of men and a bunch of other stupid shit that I want to slap my younger self for now. So part of me has the same hope for him…but he’s had way too many chances by now and he doesn’t seem to have any interest in changing his worldview.
It’s just depressing.
@Lauralot: I was also reeeaaaaally stupid when I was younger and in 5-10 years time I’d probably look back and think how stupid I was now. Wisdom with age and all that.
Argument from pulling stuff out of your arse, MRAL. Wake up and smell the fallacy.
MRAl, don’t you call me a jackass, you vile clueless little shit.
Why should I believe you cried? Nothing in your behavior here would lead me to think you’d cry about anything but how oppressed you are.
I don’t give a fuck whether you believe me or not.
I consider myself a pantheist, because I think the universe itself is divine, and maybe conscious, but… not in any way that’s really useful to humans. “The universe thinks and breathes” is a very different thing to me than “the universe cares about me, or my entire planet for that matter.”
I believe this because I think subjective consciousness–the fact that I experience things, the fact that there is an “I” to experience things–is inexplicable. I don’t buy that I’m nothing but chemistry and electricity; that would explain everything I do, but not my experience of doing it. So I believe that consciousness exists in a way not yet explained physically, and that consciousness extends in some way to every part of the universe. A rock’s consciousness may not be much like mine–as far as I know it has no way to sense or remember things–but I believe it has one.
In my everyday life I believe in empirically obtained scientific knowledge because that’s just common sense. Albeit with the caveat that scientists, and even the determination of who “counts” as a scientist, are culturally influenced and biased. I believe in science, not everything that’s labeled “science.”
Kyrie, if MRAL isn’t careful, he’ll skip turning into NWO or DKM and slide face-first into Brandonville. Now THAT’s a shitty existence. At least those two wingnuts stand out.
How exactly is he oppressed anyway? Like, for serious. I wanna know.
Scar, don’t you know it’s haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard to be a straight white guy who can’t laid? THE HORROR! OH, THE HUMANITY!!!
@Scar: Cos women won’t have sex with him.
Oppression is when bad things happen to me.
Everyone else just needs to get the fuck over themselves.
Oh gawd, not the “Chix won’t sleep with me therefore I is oppressed” crap?
Aww, while I was being all spiritual MRAL decided to get on SRS’s case for something they did not do.
And that they wouldn’t do, for fuck’s sake. What the hell in SRS makes you think they would make fun of murdered children? That’s the kind of thing they call out when it happens on Reddit!
I guess MRAL just has them labeled in his head as “meaniepants” (they won’t acknowledge the PAAAAAIIIIIIN of not being able to force women to fuck you) and he figures since they’re meaniepants they could do any kind of mean thing.
So then he thought of the worst mean thing and got very very upset about it.
Well, I’m really ugly, I’m a man, and I’m not wealthy. Sounds difficult to me.
Scar, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell. But he has a high IQ!
Hollt, the boys were white males.
SRS encourages people to hate and/or use slurs toward white males.
Therefore, they are ALREADY bashing those two boys.
The dots are not difficult to connect here.
“@hellkell, for your information, jackass, I was crying earlier today re. the Powell thing. That’s what got me so angry about SRS and their myopic, narrow, jackass view of the world. Bet they can’t wait to hate on those two boys, fucking pricks.”
I am still utterly shocked that you were able to care about someone else for a few minutes.
Scar – First of all, women won’t sleep with him. And that’s terrible. You know, it’s one of those things where if one woman didn’t sleep with him, that’s just her choice, but if all women don’t sleep with him, clearly it’s a conspiracy.
Secondly, if he deliberately goes to feminist Internet spaces, he hears people being more concerned about women’s issues than men’s, and thinks that:
A) this is oppression.
B) this is the world.
And thirdly, he’s kind of a sad angry person in general and figures there must be someone to blame.
It’s a common misconception that I’m angry because “women won’t sleep with me”. I don’t think that, necessarily, as I’ve said earlier. I’ve actually never asked a woman to sleep with me, or even asked a woman to do anything (I said I asked someone out a few months ago; that was a lie, I didn’t). But I am angry because society has made it such a big deal for me to do those things, and has made me feel like if I failed, I would be a loser. I realize it’s a bit of a vicious cycle, but I can’t think of any way out.
This is a story I very rarely tell to anyone, and have never told online, because I am absolutely disgusted by my part in it, but I’m hoping it might give MRAL some insight, however small, on how it is possible to be privileged and also a complete asshole WITHOUT realizing that you are being privileged and a complete asshole.
When I was in junior high (out in rural Indiana with perhaps three black students in the school, and even less Latino/Asian students) I was in the journalism class, which published a small newspaper about events in the school once a month. At the start of February, we came into class to find that we had a substitute that day and that we were all supposed to come up with and research an article about Black History Month.
Because we were all about 14, and narcissistic self-obsessed assholes like most junior high students, we began complaining to each other while we typed about how stupid this assignment was. I don’t remember who started it, but even if I wasn’t the initial complainer, I certainly joined in. And I don’t mean complaints like “We’ll never have room for all the articles and school news, this is stupid.” I mean complaints like “Why isn’t there a white history month?” “Why isn’t there a White Entertainment Television?” “How come they cdidan say the n-word but we can’t?” “Slavery was a long time ago, why is everybody still so obsessed with it?”
We were a class entirely comprised of middle class white students. I was white, from a two-parent household of an average income, able-bodied, cis-gendered, and at the time, I considered myself heterosexual (it wasn’t until high school that I realized I identified as aromantic and asexual). I certainly didn’t think at the time that the things I were saying were in any way racist or offensive. I had never looked at the world through any lens other than my own, and my own told me that this group telling me what I could and couldn’t say just because their ancestors were slaves was oppression. When our teacher returned, having been told by the substitute what we had talked about, she told us how disgusted she was and how we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.
At the time, I thought she was being ridiculous. I hadn’t said anything offensive. I couldn’t have, because intent was fucking magic. I was pointing out real injustice and the world had gone insane with political correctness if I was considered an asshole for the things I said. From the point of view of a privileged white child who had never bothered to consider the feelings of others, I was a good person who was being unfairly persecuted.
Only then I grew the hell up, realized that my experiences were not worth more than anyone else’s, and that by sheer virtue of being born white, middle-class, able-bodied, and cis-gendered, I did in fact have privilege whether I sought it out or not. I realized exactly how awful the things I had said were. Because I actually stopped and considered the criticisms that other people gave me, rather than brushing them off with a “You don’t understand how hard it is to be healthy and white and able to go to school and eat proper nutrients and have running water and health insurance! It’s really hard!”
I really hope MRAL learns to realize those things.
I think my spiritual beliefs (If they can even be called that.) are something close to Holly’s, actually.
I have no idea how “cdidan” ended up in my previous post. That was supposed to be can.
I also say again, “dicks are ugly, women are beautiful” is already the mainstream, so just what the fuck does SRS think they’re subverting there? If they wanted to actually be subversive, they could go on at length about how gross, disgusting and creepy women are. But you can’t have that, amirite?
[quote]As I’ve said, the laws of physics DO NOT EXPLAIN the Big Bang, so… it’s not parsimonious.[/quote]
Yo’ure an idiot. Parsimony means you don’t introduce concepts you lack evidence for. A lack of explanation isn’t evidence for a god It’s just a lack of explanation. Again, try.
I don’t think I should be on moderation. I hardly even post anymore, except like once a week.
I just love that this was the fourth post of his in a row in 12 minutes.