Manosphere drama is always a bit surreal. You may recall my post the other day about the feud developing between two sites that are regular sources of material for us here at Man Boobz: MGTOWforums and A Voice for Men. As you may recall, the folks at MGTOWforums were working themselves into a lather because AVFM was committing the cardinal sin of allowing women – sorry, “cunts” – to post articles and comments. The horror!
Now AVFM has fired back. In a thread on AVFM’s relatively new forum, head cheese Paul Elam lashes out at the “MGTOW Forum Fuckwits,” declaring them a bunch of shit-stirring “piss ants” and announcing his plans to turn the AVFM forum into MGTOW central.
I see an opportunity here, This forum is very user friendly to MGTOW’s. MGTOW Forums is the largest one of its kind, but it is run by children. I will happily siphon off as many of the men they ban and shame for not measuring up to their cliquish little band of alpha wannabe’s as I can.
God knows [MGTOWforums admin] Nacho and his bootlickers run them off as quick as they come in.
AVfM is already a more traveled site than their forum, and as time passes the MGTOW presence here will eclipse their little circle jerk.
Speaking of circle jerks, here’s Paul, in an unrelated thread on his forum, banning a dude for having the temerity to suggest that “Reddit, not avoiceformen.com, is the most important online resource for Men’s Rights Activism.”
BANNED! Nothing must challenge the supremacy of PAUL ELAM!
Naturally, I found out about this by reading about it on MGTOWforums, where A Voice for Men is now being dismissed as — I kid you not — “A Vagina For Manginas.”
Still, the strangest development in this civil war is this: some MGTOWers who’ve been banned from AVFM’s forum have set up an alternative forum of their own, which they’ve rather confusingly named “AVFMforums.” Yes, that’s right, it’s a battle between the AVFM forums and … AVFMforums. How can you tell them apart? Well, when the latter group uses the acronym AVFM they mean “Alternate Voice for Men” rather than the original “A Voice for Men.” Also, the dudes at AVFMforums think that AVFM’s Elam is “a lying hippocrite [sic] with no credibility.”
If this is all a bit confusing, perhaps this brief video clip will help elucidate some of the issues here:
Also, for no particular reason, here are two new pictures of Sweetie Pie Jonus, one of my kittens:
Actually, the combatants in this latest mansophere civil war could learn a thing or two from my kittens. They fight, but always seem to end up licking each other’s heads. The kittens, that is. I’d love to see Paul Elam and his critics doing the same.
“I didn’t dispute the accuracy of that statement; I did dispute its relevance given the passage of the 13th amendment.”
You’re arguing the relevance of a statement that showed Lincoln allowed unions who fought in support of his federal government to keep their slaves for the two years between the proclamation which was to be effective January 1, 1863 and the passing of the amendment in December of 1865?
If the war was about slavery the war should have ended slavery but it didn’t. Instead, human beings were kept as slaves while other people, who happened to be geographically on the losing side, were free.
I’m calling boring troll as boring.
I don’t think Angela’s trolling? (With the qualification that I’m Australian and don’t know US history).
Nobody has ever believed in states’ rights as a thing. NOBODY. It doesn’t make any sense–sure, there are good arguments for local control, especially in a large, diverse country like the US, but states can’t have rights because they are arbitrary political entities. Nobody who argues for states’ rights actually believes in states rights’. Example number one: the fugitive slave act. It’s only supporters claimed they were for “states’ rights” but what they were really for was slavery.
Also, you are going to make a big deal out of two years between the Emancipation Proclamation and the thirteenth amendment, I’d like to point out that (a) the Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order under the President’s role of commander-in-chief, and therefore had minimal bureaucratic blue tape (this is also why it didn’t apply to the slave states that didn’t secede), (b) four of the border states outlawed slavery before the war ended, and (c) two years is actually quite quick for a constitutional amendment.
When a troll melts down and then gets banned, it’s Cusser’s Last Stand.
nerdypants–The “the civil war wasn’t about slavery” is kind of a hot-button issue in the US.
I think it is a remnant of racist history teaching trying to play down the legacy of slavery and racism in the US–we didn’t go to war over black people, we went to war over states rights–so promoting the theory isn’t just neutral jousting over history in the US, but parroting racist narratives even if unwittingly.
A really interesting take is from “Lies my Teacher Told Me” by James Loewen, which is that the South seceded because of fear of abolition, and the North started fighting to preserve the Union, but switched to ending slavery because it was more motivating–which is why four of the border states voted to end slavery during the war without any push from the federal government.
The Tampoffs… LMAO!
The discussion on slavery is really freaking interesting. The only things I know about it was that slavery was legal in the US for a period of time. There was a civil war over it and Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation. Reading about the nuances and the other factors involved make me wish my school spent more than a couple of weeks on American History.
You could argue until you’re blue in the face that it’s either one or the other or both, but saying that NOBODY could believe it could be either or the other is a bit arrogant. I’ve been googling all night. There are as many pro arguments as there are against.
I’m sure you 100% believe in your opinion. But what was left after the civil war, between the Black Codes and the Jim Crowe laws, while not abject slavery, was pretty horrible. The racism, low pay, and second class citizenship enshrined in one horrible law after another remained in place for almost a fifty years after the civil war. It’s a shame that 1/4 of a million people died to change “slave” to “second class citizen with almost no rights to speak of”. Separate but equal is a mockery of all men being created equal.
And that people suffered untold horrible amounts, dying as boys in a cold battlefield over a society that took until 1913 to convict the first white-on-black murder (it’s referenced here, (http://murderpedia.org/male.W/w/williams-john-s.htm but with no actual information of the crime and I can’t find any reference of it anywhere else and you can’t prove a negative).
I’m not a person of color, but I am gay. And the idea of being told to wait politely until equal rights to be given to people is a powder keg inside me. White, straight people men of the era told others who were not white, straight and male exactly how much “equal” they could expect to be allowed to enjoy.
That’s fair, nerdypants. But I’m still calling troll because the original claim was:
But when confronted with the 13th amendment, it’s mutated into:
It also should be noted that the 13th amendment passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate before the war actually ended. Only the dumbest slave-holders in the union would have thought they’d get to keep their slaves. Angela is trolling.
Also note the bucket-full of red herrings zhe’s puked up in the above comment.
I wouldn’t quite put it that way. I’d say that the Confederates seceded because D.C. was failing to live up to their constitutional obligation to return escaped slaves to slave-holding states. There wouldn’t have even been a war over that, except that the Confederacy was afraid of the United States condoning terrorism in favour of abolitionism. That fear was legitimized by John Brown, and the Confederates attacked the United States. At that point, it was clear that the two nations could not coexist; war was inevitable, regardless of what rallying cry was issued.
@2-D Man: I see it now in the side-by-side quotes of Angela’s. That’s a definite goal-post shift, though most people are bad at admitting when they get it wrong, and switching arguments is a tactic to save face.
I wish they had polls back then. It would be interesting to know what proportions of whites were against slavery and where they lived. It isn’t clear to me how much political advantage there was in shifting the focus from maintaining the Union to freeing people?
IIRC, there were two big issues that lead to emancipation. Both Britain and France had their own interests in North America and would have liked to have seen the South win, since this would have permanently weakened the US. But slavery had recently been abolished in both countries, so by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln basically made it politically impossible for either the British or French to actively assist the Confederacy.
The other matter was that the slaves weren’t just twiddling their thumbs, waiting for things to happen. During the war, they fled North in great numbers, often seeking out Union forces to help free them. Initially, the Union simply sent back any captured slaves, (except for those who were directly engaged on the Confederate war effort, who were considered contraband of war). As time went on, this became approach became untenable, and various Union commanders basically developed their own policies as to what to do, until the sheer volume of the problem forced the hand of the Union government.
So while, initially at least, the Civil War was not about Abolition, there’s a very good argument that the slaves themselves made it be about Abolition, whether the powers that be wanted that or not.
Sir Bodsworth–I hadn’t heard that interpretation before. I’m not a historian, so I don’t know how settled the “when did the civil war become about slavery for the North” debate is, but that theory sounds really interesting.
(I’d argue that it was always about slavery for the South–even if abolition wasn’t on the table right then, the South had seen the writing on the wall–but I think the North initially just wanted to keep the country together.)
@ wordsp1nner – I agree, it was always about Abolition in the South; the North was very reluctant to make it their cause.
Every now and again it’s fun to take a break from planet earth and go see what folks are doing in their amazing parallel world.
Hey! Did you write about/ see this one on another split; this time between the gamers and the MRAs?
http://mattforney.com/2012/09/10/we-come-not-to-praise-the-mens-rights-movement-but-to-bury-it/
Ew, that is not “gamer” as in video game, it’s “gamer” as in douchebags who neg while wearing funny hats.
I was going to say, I’d expect most gamers to respond to “what do you think of MRAs?” with “what’s an MRA?”.
Not that gamers aren’t frequently very sexist, I just don’t think most of them have any idea that MRAs exist, and I think even the most sexist of them would mostly balk at the idea of reintroducing medieval torture devices to get women to stop talking.
Yeah, PUAs do not get to call themselves gamers. That name is taken, thank you very much.
@blitzgal
I’d suggest Pissant, meaning “an inconsequential, irrelevant, or worthless person, especially one who is irritating or contemptible out of proportion to his or her significance”, except now that I think about it, that would probably apply well to MRAs too.
I know others have spoken very well to Angela’s Trollish Arguments (James Loewen’s work is TEH INCREDIBLE), but I just have to say, grrr, argh:
1. The whole History department at my rural Texas university has set as the single most important student learning outcome for the first semester history course that the students understand that slavery caused the Civil War. A huge percentage of students in the South (at least), and Texas for sure, and possibly elsewhere, I don’t know are taught STATE’S RIGHTS, and it’s a racist dogwhistle in this context. Period. I know, appeal to authority, but racism is systemic in the U.S. educational system.
And holyfuckingshit, talk about goalpostshifting:
But what was left after the civil war, between the Black Codes and the Jim Crowe laws, while not abject slavery, was pretty horrible. The racism, low pay, and second class citizenship enshrined in one horrible law after another remained in place for almost a fifty years after the civil war. It’s a shame that 1/4 of a million people died to change “slave” to “second class citizen with almost no rights to speak of”. Separate but equal is a mockery of all men being created equal.
Because one war is supposed to solve all of humanity’s problems? Grow the fuck up.
You’re also ignoring how there were changes made during Reconstruction that disappeared AFTERWARDS because of the white backlash:
http://www.ulm.edu/~ryan/206/documents/jcrow.htm
Yes, Jim Crow a reality. And even today, systemic racism exists.
But on the other hand, as horrible as the backlash was, I imagine that in some minor ways, it was better than slavery–but then as a white person I don’t think I have the right to lay down authoritative shit on the racisms in the U.S.
And the “people are in slavery still” is true–but it’s a fucking stupid argument to use to say that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery.
Sorry, must go deal with ongoing stuff at work!
Fun fact! I was just reading about Nixon’s Housing Director. A very principled man who Nixon had to boot because he was trying to deal with systemic racism in housing.
On propublica.org.
George Romney, naturally. Last of a dying breed of Republicans.
(see also What Mitt Romney Learned From His Dad, if you haven’t already seen it)
@emilygoddess:
Yeah, it’s a stupid malapropism I picked up from Blackadder III and which has lodged itself in my brain ever since.
Except they didn’t, did they, because the children of the slaves are not on the same footing as the children of the slaveholders even 150 years later, are they?
‘Cause them Jews, amirite? /snark
You’re disgusting.
Just as a fun little reminder of how incredibly disingenuous NWO is, this is the very next sentence after the one he’s quoting: “Unknown to European sellers, the women freed and married the men into their tribe.”
Yeah! Why aren’t we giving out medals for meeting the baseline of human decency!?
I mean, won’t someone think of all the Christian, white men who haven’t been told “Hey, so your ancestors may not have been racist assholes who were willing to kill/die so that they could go on owning other human beings.”