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“What a lifeless, limp, ego-centric homo,” and other bon mots from the A Voice for Men crowd

So Mr. Paul Elam was apparently so offended by this video from Jay Smooth defending Anita Sarkeesian and her Tropes Vs Women video project against its many misogynistic detractors that he sat down and wrote out a carefully reasoned rebuttal of all of Mr. Smooth’s points.

Nah, I’m kidding. He wrote a snide couple of paragraphs calling Smooth a “leftist scumbucket,” and a “chickenshit feminist quisling,” and invited his readers to jump in with their own dopey insults. And they did. Some highlights (that is, lowlights):

I showed Paul’s comment to an MRA friend, and he said, “dude, you have to stop talking to me. I don’t exist! I’m no more real than Paul Elam’s ‘gay friend.'”

Andybob added this to the debate:

Yes, that’s right, he’s saying Smooth is being a “fag” in order to score with women. Clearly we have a brilliant mind at work here.

Several comments later, Iron John, a man apparently oblivious to irony, weighed in with this gem:

On Reddit, after someone pointed out the homophobia in the comments, Elam responded with “comment mine much?”

I’m pretty sure you don’t get to complain about “comment mining” for homophobia when 1) you’re the guy behind the site and 2) you’re one of the ones shouting “fag.”

Notice that Zorro’s original comment got an equal number of upvotes and downvotes. Then Elam jumped in to give the homophobia his seal of approval. After that, it was nothing but upvotes for those using or approving of the homophobic slur.

Calling a dude a “fag” on the internet: Men’s Rights Activism at its finest!

 

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Jessay (@jessay)
12 years ago

“Stop using shaming language against me fag!”

A sentence that only makes sense in the manosphere.

Aren’t they the ones trying to claim inclusion above what modern feminism has accomplished. Standing up for the problems of all men! They claim they include the struggles of gay men in their outrage.

Nope, they just appropriate the struggles of gay men so it’ll seem like they have something to be angry about, meanwhile they throw homophobic slurs around making the problem worse. Just like they appropriate the struggles of MOC when most of them are white men.

Also I love that guy. This is one of the few instances where “You’re just jealous” really makes sense.

katz
12 years ago

Meh, the sites are just shriveling up and dying because the movement was such a nonentity to begin with. I don’t think the SPLC did anything but convince MRAs that it’s all a conspiracy.

MorkaisChosen
MorkaisChosen
12 years ago

How often do I think about background radiation? Moderately often but not every time it comes up, due to that being a relevant thing to my geekery.

Perfect analogy. I don’t always notice the Male Default stuff, but sometimes I do.

pecunium
12 years ago

Moderation trapped this before:

Bee: What is it with the MRA insistence that every man who is a feminist (or even only somehow indicates that he doesn’t completely hate women) must be so only because he’s trying to get some? I thought (in MRA land) women only have sex with guys who are complete assholes.

That’s the joke on us. Women who sleep with us are doing it under either false pretense, or misunderstanding. As a result they will dump us, and take us for everything we have.

MorkaisChosen
MorkaisChosen
12 years ago

Everything I have… Sense of humour?

pillowinhell
pillowinhell
12 years ago

We’ll steal that away too Morkais..

Mwahahah!!!

Crumbelievable
Crumbelievable
12 years ago

IIRC, on soc.men there was once a discussion about whether or not “females” (never referred to as women) were actually fully human.

One of the most telling signs of MRAs` hate of women is that they almost always refer to women as “females”. Men are “men”, but women are just “females”.

Crumbelievable
Crumbelievable
12 years ago

The whole shtick about pussy-begging and white knights is, as with most things, all about projection on their part. Women are only good for sex, in their minds. Therefore the only reason any man would ever associate with women is because he wants pussy. So any man who is involved with a woman in any way and doesn`t want to fuck them is being deceitful.

MorkaisChosen
MorkaisChosen
12 years ago

ohno

then I will not be able to take any reference to a long rigid object as some form of innuendo

MorkaisChosen
MorkaisChosen
12 years ago

… Why do they associate with men, then?

Obviously nearly any argument is equally applicable to women. Equally obviously, they won’t accept that…

Cliff Pervocracy
12 years ago

MorkaisChosen – I get the feeling a lot of them don’t associate with other men very much.

Has anyone else noticed how unsociable the dialogue on MRA sites tends to be? The comments and forums are all full of guys giving their arguments and grievances, but even though it’s the same guys posting for months or years, they never seem to recognize each other–when they interact it always has the stiff vibe of two people who’ve never talked before. There’s very little joking, very little “hey, nice to see you back here MRADude221,” and very little indication that they have any more fun in the backchannel. There’s just zero sense of camaraderie.

MRAs may not hate other men, but I don’t get much sense of them forming a brotherhood, either.

Dracula
Dracula
12 years ago

Cliff – For that matter, more than one MRA troll has openly mocked the kindness, friendship and general good humor displayed by the commentariat here, if I remember correctly. I think it says a lot about people when they use “You guys like each other!” as an insult.

Dracula
Dracula
12 years ago

It kinda has a “We’re super-serious and therefore logical and right.” feeling to it, now that I think about it.

Angela
Angela
12 years ago

Female misogynists used to blow my mind, but then I met one in person. I was astounded to meet a woman who so hated other women she wanted a magic land where all the men (and her) would have all the power and women would be chattel. I thought she was the only one until a friend of a friend of a friend asked me to critique her novel. She wanted me to read it because it had a female protagonist. The MC was the only woman in the entire book who had two brain cells to rub together. She stated point blank that only the strong could be vampires, which is why only men were vampires. It went on that way for about three quarters of the way through the book when the female protagonist’s sister dies and the the protag has to leave to take care of her nephews. The love interest quickly got over her loss and finished the rest of the book alone. I could tell the author was really trying to get me to critique her view on women, so I sent it back stating that the main character of a novel should probably stay with the novel until the end of it.

I wonder if women who would rather hang out with misogynists because they can’t stand being around other females and join in the mutual hatred are the male version of “nice” guys.

Cliff Pervocracy
12 years ago

I think they also think of friendliness and compassion as very feminine traits, and that only Objective Logical Discourse (or angry ranting) is masculine.

Men aren’t friends. Friends are people you go shoe-shopping and talk about feelings with. (and obviously only women and girly-men do those things.) Men are colleagues.

It seems lonely. 🙁

Polliwog
Polliwog
12 years ago

I think they also think of friendliness and compassion as very feminine traits, and that only Objective Logical Discourse (or angry ranting) is masculine.

Men aren’t friends. Friends are people you go shoe-shopping and talk about feelings with. (and obviously only women and girly-men do those things.) Men are colleagues.

It seems lonely. 🙁

It really does.

And the truly sad thing is, when feminists tell them, “Hey, you are allowed to have feelings! You can have friends and laugh at kitten videos and give and receive kindness and compassion, and all of those things are totally okay and don’t make you any less of a man. Go be happy!” they perceive that as “evil feminists are trying to attack men by making us all girly!” I do genuinely feel bad for them (at least right up until they start shrieking about how we should get cancer and die, at which point my sympathy tends to wither a bit).

cloudiah
12 years ago

I like polliwog’s idea that the MRAs who are moving on are doing so because they’re getting out of their negative downward spirals. I hope that is true.

My warm fuzzy feeling are probably caused by my 3-day librarian love-fest. And maybe those 2 margaritas…

Fembot
Fembot
12 years ago

Oh Paul…Paul Paul Paul Paul….I can’t.

http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3pum2z/

Argenti Aertheri
12 years ago

“at least right up until they start shrieking about how we should get cancer and die, at which point my sympathy tends to wither a bit”

Thankfully that now just causes my brain to cue Thank You Hater — “you wished me cancer, and misspelled cancer…”

cloudiah — the margaritas probably don’t hurt any, but I agree. It would be really nice if they ceased with the self-fulling prophecy that acting like a jerk because you assume people will think you’re a jerk will get you treated like a jerk (how many times in one sentence can I say jerk? XD )

Cliff Pervocracy
12 years ago

Fembot – Oh, but “fag” only means the bad ones! The good gays understand that!

(wow, just realized this argument applies to pretty much every slur in existence.)

Viscaria
Viscaria
12 years ago

Elam’s friend isn’t a fag! He’s a good gay! The kind who will who will be as femmephobic as necessary and/or who has internalized enough homophobia and/or who is willing to put up with enough homophobia from his “friends” that he gets to be part of Paul’s club!

I seriously hope Paul’s gay friend is imaginary, otherwise it’s pretty safe to say that he’s putting up with an extraordinary amount of shit to get his “gays are gross but you’re okay I guess” card.

Viscaria
Viscaria
12 years ago

Ninja’ed right down to the italics O.O

cloudiah
12 years ago

BTW, I am toasting you all with margarita #2. I’m amazed I can still type — these margarita glasses are the size of washtubs! Now my friends want me to stop typing so I’m flouncing (temporarily).

katz
12 years ago

A beautiful flounce! 9/10 (because I never award perfect scores), and enjoy your adult beverages.

Jessay (@jessay)
12 years ago

Elam’s friend isn’t a fag! He’s a good gay! The kind who will who will be as femmephobic as necessary and/or who has internalized enough homophobia and/or who is willing to put up with enough homophobia from his “friends” that he gets to be part of Paul’s club!

Oh man, I hear my cousin talk about her experiences in Chicago which is obv a much more diverse area than where she grew up in NH. We were discussing racism and she told me that the black people she talks to there say things like, “There are black people, and then there’s n****s.” It’s really depressing. It’s like, how much hatred must a person endure to get that type of mentality where they would use that kind of slur which was used to oppress their ancestors to differentiate between themselves and “bad” black people? It reminds me of people like GWW and the female MRAs. It’s this, “I’m not like ~other girls~, those horrible bitches. I’m different, love me.” I dunno, it just bothered me.