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.
ozy: If only increased efficiency meant “pay workers the same wages for the same amount of production while they work half the hours” instead of “lay off half the workers and double your profit margin”.
This is quite literally the vast majority of my job. Having to explain everything to the SRLs (self represented litigants, we are all being taught to stop calling them pro pers.)
A simple “I just called the cops asshole” is enough to help someone else without putting yourself in any danger.
Of course it does require being less than 100% Brandon level selfish so there is that.
@Lauralot – OMG, I love Jam! That line about thick people being good at winning arguments because they’re too thick to realise when they’ve lost often comes to mind with certain folk on this site… *cough* NWO *cough*
Emphasis on the “too thick to realise when they’ve lost” part rather than the “good at winning arguments” bit, of course!
@darksidecat- My family on my mother’s side is of Pennsylvania Dutch extraction, and they grew up around State College. Their North Appalacian accent is faint, but listening to your video, it is definitely there, and I never noticed until right this minute. Helps to explain why I don’t have a traditional Philadelphia accent (which is where I’m from).
Eric, LOL at “sophists gonna obfuscate.”
We finally got rid of MRAL, can Lord Aboveitall be next? He’s fuckin’ dull.
sadly, mral’s meager powers of self-awareness place him light years ahead of brandon
I dunno, I’d say Brandon’s aware of himself to the utter exclusion of anyone else.
pillowinhell – it’s spelled ceilidh 😉
Also, CassandraSays, Polliwog – *Ahem* I AM Glaswegian! I speak with a softer west coast Scots accent though, more in line with Tennant ( a Paisley boy, after all),
To be fair, I spent most of my childhood in London and I’d spend visits home to Glasgow feeling really rude for having to constantly get my cousins, aunts and uncles etc. to repeat themselves because I didn’t understand their strong accents.
@Ponkz: I’ve never met another Jam fan before! Everyone I’ve tried to show it to either doesn’t get it or doesn’t like it.
@Lauralot – Oh, I’m a massive Chris Morris fan! There was a radio version of Jam called Blue Jam on BBC radio first, which is also really good. You can find all the episodes with a bit of googling in fact, if you’re interested in checking them out. I liked those even better – the music was always quite cool and trippy.
Thanks for the recommendation! I’m definitely going to look those up.
I like the way that Brandon, who claims that taking the essential meaning of his words isn’t valid, because he didn’t use precisely those (as with his derision of those who get married), but he’s willing to say that Fatman came to the conclusion that Fatman came to a conclusion about, “all people who hold that attitude”, which is not at all what Fatman said.
A paragon of consistency he is.
@ozy: Nice job missing the point. It isn’t about working 50+ hour work weeks…that is just one of the examples popinjay used to drive the main points home:
That indifference is not the same as hatred and/or bitterness.
That a lot of men are rethinking “working to the grave” as a life choice.
That chivalry and the notion of men running to the aid of women is dying.
That a lot of men don’t see the need to “support society” outside of their own survival and recreation.
That a lot of men are rethinking what truly is important to them and are opting for a simple, minimalist lifestyle.
That instead of fighting for change, they try to make their lives as comfortable as possible.
But because of these opinions, a lot of women, especially feminists, tend to assume that men of my generation hate women, or that we’re bitter about women forcing their way into every institution of power, every fountain of wealth without giving a shit about what that might do to society.
Not all men, just some men. Again with the overbroad generalisations, from the guy who gets pissed about people quoting him directly.
@Pecunium: Umm…I didn’t write what you copied and pasted. That came directly from the article I linked to earlier in the thread.
The thing about chivalry is that it never existed the way it is portrayed in movies. The poor, old, or brown women were never included in the protected class. The white women it was for were a very small fraction of white women indeed.
Chivalry was useless as an actual protection for most women, even when it was more common than today.
And you are repeating it, as a truism. If you don’t agree with it, what was your point in quoting it?
As with the imputation that Fatman said things Fatman didn’t say.
That indifference is not the same as hatred and/or bitterness.
That a lot of men are rethinking “working to the grave” as a life choice.
That chivalry and the notion of men running to the aid of women is dying.
That a lot of men don’t see the need to “support society” outside of their own survival and recreation.
That a lot of men are rethinking what truly is important to them and are opting for a simple, minimalist lifestyle.
That instead of fighting for change, they try to make their lives as comfortable as possible.
First, you’re confusing “a lot of men” with “you.”
Second, you’re trying to make this something we should care about. It’s not.
@Pecunium: Mainly because the author’s paragraphs aren’t well formed. When trying to quote him, I noticed I was taking the end of one paragraph and the start of the next. At the end, I just decided to cut out most of the three paragraphs for continuity purposes.
@Bostonian: Fine, replace chivalry with the idea that men should rush to the aid of women when they are in trouble or when a woman is being attacked. In the end, western society doesn’t seem to like it to much when men value their own lives over women. (the most recent was being called cowards after the Costa Concordia sinking).
The thing is, in real life, the ones who rush to another’s aid tend to be those who are good people in general. They get praise for that because it is indeed praiseworthy behavior in both men and women.
People who shove others out of the way to get to safety are not praised, because shoving people out of the way in a disaster is not praiseworthy behavior.
@Katz: Really? I am the only one? Hardly. See MGTOW, PUA’s, Japan’s “Herbivores”, etc…
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120696816
Are you saying there are NO other men that want to live a simple, minimal life and not having to work themselves to death to have an overpriced home, 2 cars, a wife and 2 1/2 kids, a dog…oh…and a white picket fence.
All I am saying is the phenomena of “Herbivores” are moving across the Pacific (at least some of it anyways). While the number of men might not be significant, it isn’t just 5 guys bitching about women in their parent’s basement.
@Bostonian: Really? Now in order to be a good person one has to place themselves in dangerous situations and risk their own lives.
I am not saying the people shoving people out of the way to save their own lives should get praised for it.
No, as usual, you move the goalposts.
Those who do risky things on behalf of others get praised. Those who do that have gone above and beyond the usual. They are doing something good.
Those who just stay out of the way do not get mentioned or praised or condemned. They are not doing good or evil.
Those who shove others out of the way and impede the safety of others do get condemned. They are doing evil.
The thing is, if you want praise for just existing, that is not going to happen.
People generally get praised when they do something more than is expected.