It was, perhaps, inevitable, and now it has come to pass: obviously fed up with Men’s Rights Redditors questioning his wisdom (and his tactics, and his general narcissistic assholery) on a fairly regular basis, A Voice for Men Supreme Leader Paul Elam has started up his own Men’s Rights subreddit – r/mensrightsactivists –in which he can summarily ban all ”armchair activists” and “white knights” and “people who disagree with him.” Yep, that’s right: he’s made like a Trotskyist banana, and split.
Elam has long had a fairly strained relationship with Reddit MRAs. If you search through his comment history on Reddit, you can see evidence of numerous meltdowns on his part, which occur fairly regularly whenever anyone challenges him on pretty much anything, even when they are otherwise sympathetic to his views. On his own blog, he responds to such criticism by quickly banning the critics; on Reddit, he has tended to respond with schoolyard insults, digs at the masculinity of his critics, long recitations of his many fine accomplishments as a dedicated armchair activist, and the occasional rape joke.
Clearly the final straw for Elam was the reception given to a post of his on the poster controversy I wrote about here. Some samples from the discussion. Builtbro offers a substantive critique of Elam’s badly worded posters:
HolyCounsel is a bit more blunt:
And then there’s this edifying exchange:
The massive numbers of upvotes for Elam’s critics and downvotes for his, er, rebuttals seem to be at least partially the result of an invasion from r/SubredditDrama. Still, Elam seems to take each and every downvote personally, so the 238 net downvotes on his “Kleenex” comment must have stung.
In his new subreddit, threads like these clearly won’t be allowed to happen. As Elam explains in his less-than-welcoming “Welcome” message to new visitors:
While dissenters and the blue pill public will be welcome to post links and comment, trolls and other annoyances will be summarily booted with pleasure. This is an MRA dominated zone.
A couple of things to consider: Dissent, especially that which serves to further the improvement of the men’s movement, is welcome and appreciated. But if you want to post here, as a supposed MRA, telling others what is wrong with their work, you better have some MRA credentials.
Inactive, armchair quarterbacks, are not allowed here, unless their posts reflect genuine concern for improving and supporting the MRM and respect for those actually doing the work. If you want to ask questions so that you can learn, that is fine. But if you want to question, just so you can tear down, and you are not an MRA, then it will be adios for you. I’d sooner give a feminist the floor than a back seat driver.
R/mensrightsactivists: Come for the Elam-approved opinions, stay for the bans! Indeed, Elam devotes as much space in his “welcome” message to explaining whom he’ll ban as he does to actually spelling out what the subreddit will ostensibly do differently than good old r/mensrights.
Of course, this is not the first time that some angry MRA or two has decided to start another Men’s Rights subreddit designed to appeal to more, well, belligerent MRAs. Reddit already boasts an assortment of such subreddits, all of them fairly sparsely populated, including Rights4Men, Male Studies, and FeMRAs, a more obnoxious alternative to the already sparsely populated LadyMRAs. There’s even another subreddit devoted to MRA activism; it goes by the name of, well, MRAactivism. (There may be several more, but I can’t remember what they’re called.)
The Men’s Rights subreddit has nearly 45,000 subscribers; Elam’s new subreddit currently has 49, which is no doubt why he continues to post links to his blog in the original Men’s Rights subreddit. Whether Elam’s new subreddit succeeds and splits the MRM in two, or dies an inglorious death, one thing is sure: there will be plenty of new material for me here at Man Boobz.
aka verbal diarrhoea or full of shit
Sarah K: I generally think that valuing one group of people more than others for reasons outside their control is just about the worst thing someone can believe. I agree with you, that when you have two really horrible ideas one doesn’t have to be worse for them both to suck. Also my sleep deprived fingers changed what I meant to write, I said it was worse than transphobia when I meant it was worse than the transphobia in that statement.
Feminism is based on the idea that women are people.
Outrageous, innit ? People !? With like, personalities, opinions, strenghts and *gasp* flaws?
Now, I understood it so that you, chuckeedee, were only referring to specific kinds of feminists? Or did you seriously try to say that all feminists are like that ? Coz your wording leaves some room for interpretation.
I know a lot of people who have the misconception that feminism is somehow related if not even the same thing as misandry or female chauvinism, which it isn’t. Most people whom I know who think of women as something “better” than men tend to not understand feminism either. These people may still call themselves feminists.
Kinda like a lot of people whom I know have feminist views and should be described as such, still say that they are not feminists or aren’t sure if they are because of the common misconceptions about terminology.
The dumbest cases are the ones boasting how they know or are women who are anti-feminists – and every time they have used a wrong definition.
Feminism as a term as it’s roots in history, but it has always meant equality between the sexes. Just because some people get icked by the “fem” doesn’t mean the term itself should be changed.
Kinda like a lot of people whom I know have feminist views and should be described as such, still say that they are not feminists or aren’t sure if they are because of the common misconceptions about terminology.
I did A-level sociology, and in one class our teacher put up the five main schools we were studying (Functionalism, Marxism, Social Democracy, Feminism, and New Right). We were then asked to put up our hands for which schools we thought were most valid. I was the only person in class to put my hand up for Feminism. Turns out they did like feminist theory, they just disliked dungarees.
Fortunately, no-one put their hand up for New Right. Unlike in my history class, where all through our Birth of the Welfare State module this one girl kept espousing Daily Mail talking points (and also the most ridiculously disgusted vocalising of the word ‘lesbians’ I have ever heard), and all her friends [most of the class] agreeing with her. This earnt our class the nickname of ‘The Fascist Class’ by our left-wing history teacher.
Ah, girls’ grammar schools…
HOW THE HELL DID I MESS UP BLOCKQUOTES?! I’VE NEVER MESSED UP BLOCKQUOTES BEFORE! *sobbing*
This is the part that should be in Blockquotes, btw:
ChuckeeDee, why would Paul even make a statement about voting not guilty for someone falsely accused? That would be silly. NO, he said for anyone accused. Period.
@ YankeeFrank
I agree. I really don’t think the MRM is an actual “thing” – it is a very small group of bloggers, with a very small number of followers.
I often wonder how many of the cohort truly believe the things that they say – there was a dude on here called MRAL who, in between meltdowns, honestly said that he only said the things he did to get a reaction and because he liked the attention.
AVfM is different than the other blogs because they sometimes attempt some activism – but it’s so incredibly ineffectual. Three guys putting up posters… I mean, it’s actually sad. The sheer number of hours these guys spend online, I believe, affects their grip on reality. Some of them regard themselves as “soldiers”. Soliders need a war, so they have invented a “gender war” – it doesn’t exist.
Elam and JtO clearly love the attention and don’t mind being known to a wider audience – but what about the rest? I think they rely on the ersatz cohesion that the MRM appears to offer – but then get burned out and disappear. I’ve just spent an hour or so on AVfM – the commenters are usually the same guys that have been commenting for a year or more – the same dozen guys. And they often switch user tags too.
That said, and this might rattle a few on here, The Spearhead, AVfM and In Mala Fide have made me realize, through a weird mirror image comparison, that the internet is home to another microscopic gaggle of extremists: lunatic fringe transphobic “radfeminism”. As a group, they are smaller than the MRM and are shunned by the wider feminist community, but they exist. The MRM needs and wants them to exist to justify it’s own existence.
The original, I wasn’t sure which one to start but I stuck with the first one since I have heard more about it than brotherhood. I am 15 episodes in so far so no turning back. XD
I never saw it originally because the pictures I saw of it looked dorky and I thought it was just a typical boring shonen show. I am glad I did end up seeing it at last because I am having a lot of fun watching it.
I just want to say, KITTEH!!!!!
I would change my gravatar to a kitten, but that seems like a lot of work. I would go find pictures of my kittens to share, but that also sounds like a lot of work.
I’m lazy today.
So, instead, a word on kittens.
My kitten bit me today.
It was adorable.
Yep.
Also, you know what? Feminists have a better opinion of men than MRAs.
Feminists have a better opinion of men than MRAs.
MRAs think men can’t help raping, you just gotta stay away from them.
MRAs think men can’t help beating women, you just gotta avoid those dudes.
Feminists say men are people and can do better and be better than the gender-essentialist bullshit MRAs shovel on their backs.
Hum. I can’t even see a post on SRD about this. SRD hasn’t been posting much about MRAs lately because they’ve constantly reminded us that they’re wayyyyyy too easy to make fun of.
I looked at /r/mensrightsactivists earlier today, and there was a (now removed) submission about how they got brigaded. The subreddit had existed for less than a day, and they were *already* crying about persecution. Congratulations, guys. I ordered an industrial-grade Persecuto-Meter for reading FSTDT, and it has worked fine for several months (even in these days when fundamentalists are debating about that one insignificant chicken restaurant that’s supposed to operate in some parts of the world). Now, I poke my nose for a minute in reddit MRA subreddits, and the thing blew right up.
WTF is unreal rape? Is it like an undead bunny?
Little-known fact: holding extreme views does not make one an extremist. It’s only when one holds the wrong extreme views (ie. Islam, feminism) that one becomes an extremist.
Dude, seriously, it’s not hard to figure out. He instructed others to vote ‘not guilty’ even if they had been shown to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. How does this draw attention to anything? All it does is make this ‘unreliable’ legal system less reliable. Is that really what you want?
Again with this strange distinction, one that’s especially strange in this context. If a person is guilty of rape, then they’re guilty of ‘real rape’ too. By definition. Because rape is real.
And I have trouble believing that Elam wants to see rapists go to prison. He’s advocated hurting women too many times.
Wait, Chuck thinks David thinks that the problem with Paul ‘the idea of fucking women’s shit up gives me an erection’ Elam is that he’s not ‘extremist’ enough?
(pee ess: LATE TO THE PARTY KITTEH)
“WTF is unreal rape? Is it like an undead bunny?”
Currently well-established forms of unreal rape include:
date rape (date-a-thug rape); too-drunk-to-notice rape (too drunk to give consent); changed-my-mind rape (the sex you regret the next day and claim absence/withdrawal of consent).
I would expect the following categories to be formalized anytime soon:
take-back-the-night rape; full-moon rape; super-bowl rape; campus-late-at-night rape; campus-at-noon rape.
So, chuck, thanks for doubling down.
By the numbers, that’s real rape, real rape, non-existent/never-happened/only MRA fantasy, and then, y’know, even more rape apologia.
In case that wasn’t clear…
Date Rape = Real Rape.
And you = douchecanoe.
I actually think that’s the right order to do it in; the original is fantastic as a stand-alone, and then Brotherhood is good because it follows the manga. When it comes to multiple versions of shows I prefer to watch the “purer” version second, after the made-up ending version, myself.
And yeah, that show is crazy. Fucking alchemy, how does it work??
Wow, and chuckeedee shows once again why we call the MRM a hate movement.
Just like “real” marriage is between a man and a woman, “real” rape is between an evil strange brute and a lovely virgin maiden. Duh. Best worldview evah!
Also, you know, men are date raped too.
The MRM: proudly denying the experience of male victims in the name of men’s rights.
It’s the un-subtlety of it that floored me.
“Let me use the dog-whistle ‘real’ rape.”
“Hang on, what do you mean ‘real’ rape?”
“I mean, if you can convince her to go on a date with you first then obviously you can do anything you want, including hold her down and rape her, and it’s not REAL, duh!!”
Fucking dogwhistles, who needs them? Let’s just say what they mean! If you got raped on a date, it’s your own fault for choosing to date a ‘thug’!!!
….because rapists have signs on their foreheads. And they’re totally ‘thugs,’ y’know.
Hey, chuck, care to admit that thug is a dogwhistle for ‘not white’? I mean, we know it, you know it. But you seem okay admitting your hate, and we’d like to know how far that goes.
huh?
women should know better than to hang out with fuckin alpha thug werewolves
The NFL needs to institute a second, women’s only Super Bowl?
Women should know better than to think men come to universities to study!!!
The MRM, not even as great a civil rights movement as the Twilight fandom
And he left out marital rape. After all, if consenting to a date means you can’t say no to sex, then obviously consenting to a marriage means you can’t say no to sex. It’s the only way to stay consistent in your garbage nightmare views, chuck.
@jumbofish
The original FMA is fuckin magic! And that’s coming from someone who is indifferent to/despises 99% of anime.
I can’t wait to see how he answers this one.
And Chuckeedee outs himself as a rape apologist slimeball. That didn’t take long.
Mind you, I sort of prefer our trolls to be upfront about this. It’s the weaselly and evasive ones who flirt with obnoxious worldviews and then back away saying “no, I don’t really believe this – it was just a thought experiment” that are much more annoying.
….okay, this comes on the heel of many other recs. At this point, I think I need to check this out.
Darn kids, always giving me homework….