If you stuff a bunch of angry, narcissistic, egotistical twits into a “movement” the size of a teapot, it is perhaps inevitable that there will be drama. So I’m pleased to report on a dramatic BREAKING STORY in the Men’s Rights “movement” – a split between A Voice for Men and the bald, blabby, bigoted far-right videoblogger Bernard Chapin.
Well, I’m not sure how much of a BREAKING STORY it is. It happened about three weeks ago, but I only just noticed it yesterday.
Anyhoo, the split happened after Chapin appeared on the AVFM News and Activism “radio” show in the wake of the election. Apparently (I haven’t listened to it) he said some things that displeased the A Voice for Men regulars and a giant battle erupted in the comments section. Alas, AVFM head narcissist Paul Elam got pissy and deleted all the comments, so the exact details of the discussion are apparently lost to history. But the few details I have been able to glean, by watching a couple of Chapin videos and looking at his Facebook page, are hilarious.
The basis of the disagreement is, surprisingly enough, sort of substantive: Chapin is a right-wing blogger, while the A Voice for Men guys like to pretend that they are somehow above political partisanship. But naturally, this being the Men’s Rights movement, this disagreement played out in the silliest possible way.
In several videos made during and after the comments-page kerfuffle, Chapin charges that A Voice for Men – which he now refers to as A Voice for Diabolical Leftists – is being taken over by leftists and radical feminists, some of them possibly agents for the Southern Poverty Law Center (or at least SPLC fellow travelers). No, really; he seems to actually believe this.
According to Chapin, the vanguard of this leftist infiltration of AVFM is the site’s relatively new “managing editor,” a long-haired, middle-aged IT dude by the name of Dean Esmay, whom Chapin has taken to calling “Dean Rimsgays” and “Dean Licksgays.” (Such a wit!)
Chapin accuses Esmay of being an evil lefty who doesn’t appreciate the full gloriousness of small government, while Esmay accuses Chapin of not having a solution to the problem of greedy, golddigging, Alpha-male-chasing ladies. No, seriously. At one point in the debate Esmay apparently confronted Chapin about this crucial Men’s Rights issue:
While you’re at it, explain to me how “smaller government” will end hypergamy. Indeed, explain to me if you would why libertarianism (whichever particular flavor of that ideology you espouse) would not actually APPLAUD hypergamy in women? What, like she owes her man something? If he’s a “loser” who doesn’t make enough money to make her happy, why shouldn’t she dump him and trade up? Hey, isn’t that the FREE MARKET?
Chapin is also pissed that some of the AVFM folks refer to him as “Bernie” instead of “Bernard.” Elam is (one can only imagine) pissed that Bernie has done an impression of him in a silly voice.
And so these former allies are now going their separate ways. A Voice for Men seems to have removed Bernie’s – sorry, Bernard’s – videos from its video page (or at least from its “featured video” list), though it hasn’t scrubbed all mentions of Chapin from the site.
I look forward to the day when all of the “big names” in the Men’s Rights movement stop talking to one another.
I was thinking of posting one of Chapin’s anti-AVFM videos here, but he’s so irritatingly long-winded you’re probably better off not watching them (I’ve got a couple of links above if you’re feeling especially masochistic). Here, instead, is a video of a talking kitty:
But natfantastic, they don’t allow bigotry or arseholery, ergo they are afraid of dissent. QED.
“What’s missing on both sides is understanding…recognising differences & working to overcome them.”
We do this discussion periodic, there is no goddamned common ground — MRAs think women shouldn’t have the right to vote, discuss how to silence women and babies, think legal abortion means they should be allowed to get out of child support via “financial abortion”, etc. These are all fundamentally incompatible with feminism.
I repeat, there is no common ground here.
MRAs think women aren’t people and feminists think women are people – what about the poor excluded middle that thinks women are sometimes people? TEACH THE CONTROVERSY!
A common misconception among those who are looking for an argument rather than a discussion.
God, I’m so glad I’m not alone. I just discovered this dude when he tackled an article I wrote for HuffPo. The comment section of his youtube video included such gems as “”sluts deserve to be shamed. no one wants to throw a hotdog down a hallway,” “ugly bitches turn feminist ’cause they can’t get laid,” and “selfish cunt.”
Someone, please, now, one more time, explain to me that we don’t need a feminist movement anymore.