Over on A Voice for Men, noted human rights advocate Paul Elam has responded to criticism from a fellow antifeminist internet warrior in his typically logical, understated manner. Some highlights:
He’s whining, about jack shit, on behalf of a misandric cunt. …
Matt Forney just jerked off all over his bed sheets. And now it appears he is standing there like a virtual ‘tard, grinning about it and drooling.
At issue? Mr. Forney wrote a post some months back critical of the faux “offenders registry” called Register-Her, a pet project of A Voice for Men’s JohnTheOther in which female “bigots” – that is, feminists – are “registered” as “offenders” alongside female criminals. (Forney’s post originally appeared on the thankfully now-defunct blog In Mala Fide, but Elam only discovered it after Forney posted it on his own blog.)
In particular, Forney disagreed with Elam’s decision to “register” actress Katherine Heigl as a “bigot” after she made a Funny or Die PSA about spaying dogs and cats. The problem, for Elam and crew? That in the video she pretended to be a crazed testicle-hater obsessed with cutting off all balls, including those of human males. The AVFM crowd whipped themselves into a frenzy over this one, with Elam’s Number One Stooge JohnTheOther writing, in all seriousness:
Katherine Heigl’s supposedly humorous claim; that her advocacy of neutering pets is an outlet for her desire to chop human male’s balls off shouldn’t be taken out of context. The context being that she’s a creature of hollywood who lives in california – the same state which earlier this year saw Katherine Becker cut her husband’s penis off for the “offense” of wanting a divorce. …
We know it’s a joke. That’s the point. It’s both shocking, and plausibly deniable. It also wouldn’t be funny to most people if there was not an element of truth in it. Heigl’s “joke” included the word “yet”. This is an obvious nod to her awareness of increasing cultural acceptance of male-targeted violence and mutilation.
No, I have no fucking clue what on earth he means by that bit about the word “yet.” He goes on:
Male targeting violence persists and escalates because in the unconscious reptile corner of men’s minds, they think nodding along with whatever vile , violent, murderous shit the nearest vacuous barbie utters in her you-go-girl bubble of social enablement might get him approved for access to the magic vagina.
Like Elam, JohnTheOther apparently writes all his posts for AVFM with steam literally coming out of his ears.
Here’s the video in question. (Sorry, it won’t embed.) As you can see, the real butt of the joke is Heigl herself, and more generally narcissistic celebs who glom onto fashionable causes for all the wrong reasons. It’s not really a castration joke; it’s an actress making fun of her own reputation for narcissism. (And the video is also a serious attempt to raise awareness about the need to spay and neuter pets.)
Forney, in the blog post that roused Elam’s incredibly easy-to-rouse fury, suggested that AVFM’s claimed outrage about Heigl’s video was both silly and a bit unconvincing:
Were you honestly offended? Did that video get you mad? It didn’t get me mad. I thought it was stupid and unfunny, but aside from that, I don’t care about it. After watching it, I just shrugged my shoulders and closed the tab.
Forney went on to suggest that any MRAs who were offended by the video were, well, basically a bunch of “phony pussies,” a virtual mirror-image of the Politically Correct:
In trying to gin up indignation over Heigl’s ball-cutting comments, Register-Her.com and the MRM are seeking to perpetuate our politically correct regime, not burn it to the ground and piss on its ashes. …
The men’s rights movement wants men to keep picking at their scabs, to wallow in self-pity for all eternity. That’s not a satisfying goal for me, or countless other men who want to rise out of the mud. Until MRAs address this issue, their movement will be stuck in neutral, regardless of their occasional victories.
Yes, that’s right. A dude posting on In Mala Fide — which was known for its blatant misogyny and its proud racism, among other terrible things — is the closest we’ve got to a “voice of reason” in this particular debate.
Elam, an MRA scab-picker extraordinaire, lashed out in barely coherent rage to Forney’s charges:
[T]his kind of chicken-shit nit picking by a supposed sympathizer is far more pathetic that the Heigl video could have ever hoped to be.
Why would the Heigl video hope to be pathetic? Also, how exactly can a video hope?
I write people like you off all the time. But then you have the gumption to parrot a bunch of keyboard courage about crushing your enemies? And you make fun of guys who get fucked over by the system? What a laugh. I don’t mean what you said, but you, personally.
You may be every bit as brave as your words. I doubt it, but I don’t know. What I do know is that your article is a misandric piece of shit. Based on your rhetoric, though, I would lay dollars to doughnuts you have never crushed so much as a Dixie Cup at a water cooler. Your kind of man never does.
Says the man whose entire life is devoted to bashing out angry internet screeds, and whose only known attempt at real-world organizing collapsed before it really even began.
You just shit on those out there taking the hits and doing the work, likely because you lack the conviction to stick your neck out for anything really important to anyone but yourself.
Personally, I would not talk to MRA’s about picking scabs until you quit being one.
I’m not sure if Elam is calling Forney a “scab” as a sort of random insult referring back to his mention of scabs, or if Elam thinks that Forney is a “scab” violating some imaginary MRA “sex strike” – or “cock blockade” – by not hating on the ladies every second of every day. I’m guessing it’s the latter, because Elam really is that delusional.
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EDITED TO ADD: Matt Forney has responded to Elam’s little tantrum here. At the end, he says this:
And since I can’t end this post without mentioning that David Futrelle has (reluctantly) defended me on this issue, mainly because Elam’s neckbeard fans are going to brandish Futrelle’s article as proof that I’m an evil crypto-feminist racist mangina, let me just say that Futrelle is an even more pathetic bitch than Elam, and I don’t want his support.
Don’t worry, lil dude. I don’t actually support you. I simply agree with you on a couple of points: that Elam is a total drama king, and that anyone who believes (or purports to believe) that Heigl’s video is something to get ENRAGED about is a twit.
And Paul Elam said “most MRAs are a blowjob away from leaving the movement” or something, it’s not an exact quote. I think most MRAs are motivated by a lack of sex. Not that there is anything wrong with celibacy, but these guysdon’t want to be. And instead of looking in a mirror to wonder why they aren’t appealing to women (and don’t tell me it’s because they’re fat or ugly or whatever–there are ways to overcome physical appearance). But they would rather just blame all women for being stuck up bitches. It’s so transparently a case of sour grapes, projection, etc. It amazes me how unaware some people can be.
And yes, I have dated “ugly” men. But the thing is, when a man has a great sense of humor, is highly intelligent, and treats me well, he magically becomes better looking in my eyes.
@ragefromthebasement- These are the guys who watch Barney Stinson from “How I Met Your Mother” and think that he’s an actual real person who they should actually, really model all their behavior towards women upon.
When I hear someone saying, “Boo Hoo, I act like a total fucking asshat and no one wants to fuck me” as though it’s as bad as starving orphans being forced to do hard labor in third world countries, I just want to respond as follows:
You have to be really extraordinarily physically repulsive to be able to use that as a genuinely valid excuse for not getting a date. Remember MRAL’s conviction that his average height and lazy eye were the only things preventing him from being a wow with the laydeez?
@ragefromthebasement- I think the whole “ugly” thing is totally subjective. However, I do also think that many men (primarily heterosexual men who are obsessed with status) are so obsessed with dating someone who falls into a narrow definition of physical “attractiveness” by cultural standards, that it doesn’t matter if they’re ACTUALLY attracted to someone with flaws like wrinkles or flab, because they’re so obsessed with grasping onto that status marker of Having the Hot Arm Candy that they ignore other things that might actually be equally important when their friends go home and they’re alone with that person (such as common interests, friendship, sexual chemistry, etc).
For example, there are men who fall into the “stereotypically attractive” appearance factor on the internet who, when anonymous, are obsessed with BBW ladies- but many of them completely and utterly terrified to act upon it in real life because of what it would do to their privilege and perceptions by others (well, most of them don’t say it like that, but the fear is real even if they don’t acknowledge that losing privilege is actually a Thing).
As far as heterosexual women are concerned, they’re a little luckier because their lack of privilege generally means that unless they’re with someone who is basically a leech, his qualities such as hard working/cooperative nature/kindness are generally valued more than his looks because men are considered people. Therefore, she has more ability to choose from a wide swath of people because what is “attractive” is very individualized since men are Individuals. Meanwhile, women are simply considered Interchangeable Parts by the wide majority of MRAs and unfortunately this mindset bleeds into the popular social consciousness and really taints how even non MRA heterosexual males behave (especially when they’re young).
“…his qualities such as hard working/cooperative nature/kindness are generally valued more than his looks because men are considered people.”
This. Exactly. All that’s expected of women is that they are hot, and nice. But hot is first.
Indeed – it’s prioritizing other people’s opinions over the only two that actually matter: yours and your partner’s. I couldn’t care less whether other people think that my wife is hot – in fact, for various reasons, it’s more convenient if they don’t.
“Remember MRAL’s conviction that his average height and lazy eye were the only things preventing him from being a wow with the laydeez?”
I actually like men who are on the shorter side. Being tall is overrated in my opinion.
Must have been the lazy eye, then. It certainly couldn’t be personality-related.
Why is it that whatever happens to fall from a woman’s mouth, in this case cutting off a mans balls, is considered biting satire? Yet those same words regendered coming from a man would be considered sexual harrassment? Lawyers would be crawling out of the woodwork to sue the pants off the guy.
One of my friends is 18 years old and in high school. She mentioned today that the guys around her tell her they want to rape her, talk about putting roofies in her drink if she came to one of their parties, and how basically all that’s stopping them from raping her is that they have girlfriends. They claim these are jokes.
Until men stop making jokes like this, I’m afraid I can’t rally against this video that is very obviously not serious. Sorry MRAs. Tell the rest of the male population that threatening a woman with rape is not a fucking joke. Thanks.
Really think it’s likely to go the other way- that idea being a part of social consciousness for whatever reason is in part, I think, where the MRA/PUA type thing came from.
Wetherby, no! You’ve said his name! Now that makes it okay for him to come over here and yell at us despite being banned!
BTW, spaying and neutering our pets save countless lives so bravo to Katherine Heigl for raising awareness of this issue.
Is that why my post was moderated? If so, it’s all David’s fault for letting it through.
rage:
I suspect what Voice means is that women band together to collectively control “access” to all the sex. Voice has no great love for female bodily autonomy on an individual level either, but what is mean here is less “a woman can say ‘no'” and more “all women will say ‘no’ unless the man gets a dispensation from the Grand Council of Women by being alpha rich Brad Pitt thugboy blather blather blather.”
Anecdata: I dated a guy-who-wound-up-an-MRA once, who got a vasectomy about two weeks into the relationship (it was something he’d wanted for a long time and I didn’t give a crap because it wasn’t my body). He was thrilled. And his sex drive seemed to go through the roof after that – in part, I’m sure, because the anxiety of accidentally impregnating anyone ever had disappeared.
Also,
I feel like this should be the definition of MGTOW. They remind me of little kids who pitch a fit and scream, “I’m going to kill myself and then run away from home!” They want their audience to gasp and clutch their pearls and cry, “no, don’t do that, I’ll give you anything you want!”, but alas – their audience merely laughs and says “that’s nice, dear.”
Yes, I can easily see how that might be a significant factor.
“And his sex drive seemed to go through the roof after that – in part, I’m sure, because the anxiety of accidentally impregnating anyone ever had disappeared.”
And cheers to that. That seems like an excellent reason to have lots of sex. Fear of accidental pregnancy sucks.
“I suspect what Voice means is that women band together to collectively control “access” to all the sex.” — probably, my FWB suggested women should stage Lysistrata protests and refuse to have sex until the legal assault on women’s rights stops, told him he doesn’t much have to worry about that because women already are with assholes and he’s not an asshole. Yes MRAs, that’s right, there’s at least one man who specifically thinks you don’t deserve sex for acting the way you do and would be okay using his hands if women wanted to go celibate to fight for women’s rights.
“They remind me of little kids who pitch a fit and scream, “I’m going to kill myself and then run away from home!” They want their audience to gasp and clutch their pearls and cry, “no, don’t do that, I’ll give you anything you want!”, but alas – their audience merely laughs and says “that’s nice, dear.””
Your analogy, I love it. Go on MGTOW, hold your breath until you pass out, your lips will open when that happens if you manage to last that long (this is TRUFAX! you cannot kill yourself simply by refusing to breath, you can only make yourself pass out)
One of the reasons I feel very fortunate, is that me and my husband have absolutely no fears of pregnancy or STIs whatsoever. It takes a lot of anxiety off!
And yeah, there’s a map floating around somewhere noting which countries REQUIRE trans people be sterilized to be legally recognized as their gender. So yeah, MRAs, fuck off. Those are men actually GETTING sterilized.
Thrill as NWO cannot find any examples of such an occurrence to support his argument!
Sweden still require trans people to be sterilized in order to be legally recognized as their gender. It’s an old law that hasn’t been changed since the seventies, when trans people first got the right to government-sponsered sex-correction surgery (I’m not quite sure if “sex-correction” is the right term in English… please correct me if I’m wrong). Back then the law was, overall, quite progressive, despite demanding sterilization. Now it’s an ugly dinosaur of a law.
Hopefully though the law will change now as the KD (christian-democratic party, conservatives) have finally changed their mind on the matter. For years Sweden has been ruled by a coalition of right-wing parties of which KD is a part. Basically, KD was the only party in the group who still wanted forced sterilization for trans people, and the others went along with it and let them have their way on this point in exchange for having their support in other issues. But a month or so ago the leaders of KD wrote an article in our biggest morning paper saying they’d come to the conclusion, after thinking long and hard about the matter, that since everybody’s equal according to Christian ethics trans people shouldn’t be forced to get sterilized.
SO hopefully the law will be changed now.
NWO, do you understand that funny or die is, by definition, a humor site? In other words all people would do if men did the reverse is vote for it to die (as in “not funny” as in the equiv if a downvote on reddit) — and maybe complain about it, calling it, as the first quotee did “stupid and unfunny” — the part where Elam insists that’s misandric and “chicken-shit nit picking by a supposed sympathizer” wouldn’t happen (or if it did only on the sort of sites that most feminists try to ignore already anyways). This does assume the actual reverse, as in politely done without attacking women, just their ovaries…except you can’t see ovaries, so the “disgusting to look at” part would fail and it really would be less funny.
Certainly though no one is getting sued over posting content to funny or die, except maybe DMCA violations, and copyright is not on topic here. And it’s satire because it is actually satire (tautological, I know, but NWO won’t listen anyways) — human men can control both their impulses and birth control, it’s shaming people into spaying and neutering, ergo satire — it’s funny-ish because clearly no one is actually suggesting (cis) human men be castrated against their will.
LBT — a quick search turns up this European map and these charts — the first one seems a rather inclusive list.