Several days ago, angry-MRA-dude hub A Voice for Men ran a guest post from someone identified only as Phil in Utah entitled “How I became an MRA: Domestic violence advocacy.” After Phil’s post in question drew some criticism from some of the AVfM regulars who didn’t see it as radical enough, site founder and head cheese Paul Elam felt it necessary to take Phil to task for one of the statements he made in the post.
So let’s have a quick quiz. Here are three quotes taken from Phil in Utah’s post. Which of them is the one that drew Elam’s ire?
- “[F]eminists only support the rights of women who agree with them, and have no qualms throwing disagreeing women under the bus.”
- “[T]he idea that women are hurt more than men by being abused is a load of crap.”
- “I still believe that men who brutalize women are the scum of the Earth.”
ANSWER: Did you guess #1? Wrong. While this statement isn’t actually true, Elam didn’t object to it. How about #2? While this statement is also untrue – numerous studies show that women are far more likely to be seriously injured by domestic violence than men – Elam didn’t object to it either. Nope. He objected to statement #3. That is:
I still believe that men who brutalize women are the scum of the Earth.
How could any decent human being possibly object to this? Here’s Elam explanation:
I admit I flinched a little when I read this. Clearly these are words rooted in old world sexist notions about violence; that somehow men who brutalize women are worse than women who brutalize men. It is old programming that tends to swim around in the unconscious even after the first few rounds of red pills.
Now, I should note that Phil didn’t actually say, or imply, that “men who brutalize women are worse than women who brutalize men.” Indeed, he spent most of the essay arguing that DV against men needed to be taken more seriously. If anything, he minimized violence against women, by denying the fact that women are indeed more likely to be seriously injured by their male partners than male partners are to be seriously injured by women.
Evidently, for Elam and others on AVfM, straightforward expressions of enmity against men who brutalize women are a form of “latent misandry.”
But we’re only just getting started here. As it turns out, Elam was less troubled by Phil’s “misandry” than he was by some of the nastier attacks on Phil and other
new MRA’s who are ‘getting it’ but have not had the time or opportunity to fully refine their understanding of the modern zeitgeist.
Indeed, one commenter had even gone so far as to call poor Phil “pussy-footed.” And yet another called him a “mangina/white knight.” This, Elam announced, would not do!
MRA’s name calling and shaming other MRA’s is not constructive. It is petty alpha-gaming … .
In other words, it’s the sort of thing that guys do to try to impress the chicks. And that’s bad.
[A] significant part of the dynamics that hinder progress in the MRM is the innate friction between men which is driven by an undercurrent of sexual competition. Our unfortunate programming is to apply downward pressure on each other in order to vie for sexual selection.
On MRA blogs, this is often described with the scientific term “pussy begging.” Elam continued:
Feminism is an outgrowth of chivalry. It is dependent on male sexual competition to thrive. In short, misandry, feminism, the stinking lot of it, is a human problem rooted in men’s mindless competition for women. We don’t get out of that competition by simply rejecting women or Going Our Own Way. We get out of it by identifying and respectfully challenging the elements of that competition when they prove dysfunctional, as in going after MRA’s for blood any time we imagine they are not 100% on message. This conduct, when distilled down to its essence, is just a tell-tale artifact of pussy-centric masculinity.
So, in other words, MRAs who call other MRAs pussy-begging manginas are themselves … pussy-begging manginas.
Such is MRA logic.
I bet that most MRA’s would be scared to commit perjury just to end up on a jury for a rape trial. They love to talk a big game but when it really comes down to it, they’re probably not willing to risk going to jail or pay a fine for the MRM. Many people can be intimidated just by walking into a courthouse. I know I find it a little scary when I go there to pay taxes or get tax receipts to renew my license plate tags. MRA’s would have to have nerves of steel to lie to lawyers in a courthouse during voir dire.
A relative of mine was weeded out of a jury pool recently for a criminal case. The defendant was accused of possession of marijuana. The prosecutor asked the potential jurors if they believed marijuana should be legal. My relative raised his hand and said “Yes”. The prosecutor had him dismissed. My relative would have enjoyed sitting on a jury, too, because he considers it an honorable civic duty. However, he believes that being honest is more important than serving.
One of my relatives actually did once get someone acquitted who he thought was guilty.
It wasn’t a rape case though. It was an elderly homeless man who had been caught with an extremely small amount of marijuana, and my relative’s feeling was that yeah, it probably was illegal possession, but it would be complete bullshit to send this poor old guy who hadn’t hurt anyone to jail. He and one other juror kind of took up the cause (while the other ten were just apathetic) and turned in a “not guilty” verdict.
BoggiDWurms- Simone DeBeauvoir is brilliant, isn’t she? I’ve been reading the Second Sex, and my plan is go just go spew quotes from it all over the Manosphere. Woman speaks truth to power.
this would probably be me. i think jury’s are really important and all, and i wouldn’t have a problem being on one, but i have enough radical views that i dont think i could survive voir dire (or as its often called in the great state of georgia, ‘vor dyer’)
(or as its often called in the great state of georgia, ‘vor dyer’)
They call it that here in rural Missouri, too. When I got called for jury duty a few years back, it literally took me several minutes to figure out what the hell this “vore dyer” thing people were talking about was. (And then I winced every time anyone said it after that. Sometimes being fluent in French in the rural Midwest is downright painful.)
Polliwog, I didn’t know you’re in MO. I’m in Joplin. I cringe whenever someone says “Vaw-moose” to mean “Let’s go.” You either say vamos or bamos, with the o being a long o sound. I have a bit of a rural midwestern accent, too, but I care about the rules of Spanish pronunciation.
hellkell: Elam does specify man raping woman.
re, “voir dire”: It’s pronounced, “vwa dyer” in legal latin because the british pronunciation of Latin is horrid. Even in the 16th century those who were fluent in it (e.g. Philip Sidney) had a hard time being understood. By the 19th century British Diplomats (famously at the Congress of Vienna) could use Latin as a secret language, in meetings where all the participants spoke latin.
Legal latin also does things like, “per see”, and any number of other abominations.
My professor taught us both pronunciations, because we too were in the south XD
Kendra, I never realized that va-moose was supposed to mean vamos! Of course, my part of VA is notorious for it’s mis-pronunciation of Spanish (yes, Rio Rd. is pronounced Rye-o) – we do pronounce our French vaguely correctly, but we add a heavy Southern accent on top, just in case someone could briefly understand us.
I had one of these at the prosecutor’s office, only it was a 20something man. Anyway, the jury came back “not guilty,” and when I asked one of them what that was all about afterwards (you can do that afterwards, just not before or during), she said “oh, we believe he had the pot. We just don’t think he should have a criminal record for it.”
…Professionally, I wasn’t allowed to like that answer, of course. But personally, I didn’t mind. I’d much rather legalize pot entirely so that a defendant isn’t at the mercy of a particular jury, because that’s arbitrary crap. But since pot use is illegal and jury nullification is a real thing in the world, I don’t mind when they get together for now.
Depending on where in the country I am or who I’m talking to, I’ve heard “vwar deer,” “vwohr deer,” “vore dye-er,” “vorder,” and a bunch of others. Usually we can decode one another, but when in doubt, lots of us just start calling it “jury selection.” 🙂
Isn’t it “per se” that you mean? That’s a word I see quite regularly used in written form but almost never by oral, since it sound exactly like ‘percer’ (to pierce).
Do you know how “voir dire” translate? My latin learning days are far behind me and long forgotten. (more the second than the first, actually)
Voir dire isn’t Latin, it’s French derived from Latin.
Polliwog, I didn’t know you’re in MO. I’m in Joplin.
I am indeed! I live out in the countryside not too far from Kansas City. I think of myself as a Kansas Citian because “middle of nowhere-ian but I drive to Kansas City for work and to buy stuff and such” takes too long to say. *waves from a bit north of you*
Depending on where in the country I am or who I’m talking to, I’ve heard “vwar deer,” “vwohr deer,” “vore dye-er,” “vorder,” and a bunch of others. Usually we can decode one another, but when in doubt, lots of us just start calling it “jury selection.” 🙂
But…but how will people know you’re lawyers if you just speak English? 😉
Per se, is in Church Latin, “pur say”, and in classical Latin something more like, pur tsay, or pur chay.
Voir dire means, “the oath of witness” and is Norman French (from whence comes a lot of English Legal terminology. One can still compel the governor of the Isle of Man to listen to one’s case by showig up and dawn and declaring (loudly) a specific formula in Norman French, but I digress). It means, “to speak the truth) and comes from the Latin, verum dicere, which means, “to speak the truth”.
A relative of mine was weeded out of a jury pool recently for a criminal case. The defendant was accused of possession of marijuana.
“Weeded.” Ha!
supposedly in georgia a lot of people say ‘vor dyer’ even if they know better because of some beloved state politician who couldnt pronounce it correctly. idk, i heard that story as a 1L and then never again. it’s not something i think a lot about due to my total unsuitability to be a trial lawyer
You’d be amazed how many times I’ve had opposing counsel underestimate me because they confused “this brief could be understood by a literate layperson” with “this lawyer is a fool.” (Or maybe you wouldn’t. I don’t know!)
Part of the reason I left litigation for marketing is because I firmly believe that (a) most adults are capable of understanding what’s going on with their own legal cases, if it’s explained to them in a language they actually understand, and (b) a client who understands zir own case is infinitely preferable to a client who does not.
Many attorneys disagree with me on one or both points. That’s fine. They don’t have to hire me. 😉
In Indiana, Versailles is Vur-sails. There are also people in my end of the state who can pronounce tire, tar, and tower to sound exactly the same.
Though I don’t have the Southern Indiana accent, I’ve been around it for so long that it’s hard for me to describe exactly what it sounds like. Picture O Brother, Where Art Thou and you’ll have a pretty good idea.
Though now that I think of it, my mother did have to teach me not to pronounce “crayon” to sound like “crown” when I was a preschooler. I’m not sure what that vowel merger is called, but it’s common in my hometown.
The conversation about accents makes me smile. I remember being in Toronto once, sitting next to a pair of American guys. Took me twenty minutes to realize they were speaking English! Interesting how accents are pretty much erased on tv, unless some stereotype needs to be portrayed.
Hell, the only way any MRA would make any progress with their utopia is nothing short of entering and winning the Twisted Metal tournament. Thankfully they’d get their wish twisted by having the artificial wombs they want only create girls.
That’s awesome. I love KC. I go to a lot of Chiefs games up there, and I also love the Royals. I’m not much into baseball, but some of the Royals players and cheerleaders gave my family care packages full of underwear, socks, and toiletries last June at Sam’s Club. They even fed us a BBQ lunch. Some Chiefs players visited, too, on another occasion. We appreciate all the support from KC. *Waves back from Joplin*
LOL! I didn’t even think of my word choice there, but it’s really fitting.
I recently ran across a woman with a very pronounced Canadian accent (oot and aboot and all that). It turned out she was not Canadian, and hadn’t grown up anywhere near Canada. I think she has lived somewhere vaguely near Canada for a couple of years, decades earlier, and that was enough to permanently alter her accent.