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:
I saw! We have screwed up so badly so often that it does my heart good when we finally get something right.
I found #13! The Todd story explained, kinda sorta. Actually it’s more like the Blair Witch Project.
I’m not surprised. Usually people who gravitate towards each other based on mutual hatred wind up hating each other and being consumed by their own petty drama. Especially when the hatred is based on nonsense.
Lol funny thing is I agree with “uncle bern” on this one. Mens rights vs women’s rights is absolutely a left/right issue. Leftist MRAs make no sense to me, how they reconcile their beliefs is beyond me.
I listened to the podcast which featured bernie, as is often the case I couldn’t understand a lot of it because they talk over each other. What I did gather though was that people wanted to call in to inform bernard that leftists weren’t all evil, and that bernard countered this by saying big government is evil and inherently misandrist.
Interesting times we are living in, lets just watch as they tear each other apart. Anyone got popcorn?
I read how Bernard Chapin hates to be called “Bernie” and I thought of the teacher who sat on Dash’s thumbtack in “The Incredibles” saying, “Don’t ‘Bernie’ me. THIS LITTLE MAGGOT IS GUILTY!”
@lowquacks, I’m usually more partial to rum and coke, but I was kind of working with what I had, I want some vermouth and olives so I can start making martinis, the only hard liquor I like sweet is scotch, the vague sweetness I find with vodka is almost sickly, so I want martinis so that I can have something a bit dryer to switch things up every once in a while.
I’ve got to say, I think Dean Esmay is one of the least offensive MRAs out there. I know, that’s not saying much, but I remember him posting a list of goals for the MRM, and they were fairly reasonable. Of course he’s not the norm, so it doesn’t really matter anyway.
And all this talk of cats is making me wish I had one of my own again.
My tortiseshell is 21, deaf as a post and senile. She absolutely HOWLS, to the point you can hear her a block away and we’ve had animal control called twice because she was so loud at night. Its kinda sad, when we got her she was sharp as anything.
I filmed the Shoe Fetishist tonight.
http://youtu.be/XxDq9m6R61M
My too I like talking about cats. Cats help me to become a better men, because of cats I am more in touch with my feelings. Now I understand what women is going through every day.
It is difficult to be a women in this world. Every day you have to wake up and feed your cat and after that blogging all day long on man boobs can be exhausting. I understand your blogging frustration, girl, because of these bad MRA, MGTOW and troll. Don’t forget to collect your welfare check every month.
I understand you pain girls. I seed you all the kisses I can
@Cassie
I could definitely see leftist MRA’s being a thing if by “leftist” you mean “supporting larger state expenditure and taxation”. Of course, most traditional welfare is misandric or whatever, but socialised child support (not necessarily a bad idea, I don’t think? Iceland has a system like this and government will probably be more reliable than runaway dads, plus the state having a responsibility to support children sounds reasonable and while the “financial abortion” rhetoric is horrible I don’t like how the issue’s sometimes framed as some sort of sex-punishment thing) or that weird government dating agency that one guy who used to visit here supported would both count as some twisted form of leftism.
If men are only attractive based on their paychecks, the increased income equality that often comes with leftism could reduce that awful alpha/beta divide too?
Left-MRAism doesn’t make any more sense as an idea than Right-MRAism, but it certainly doesn’t seem to make any less.
:
If you have dark or spiced rum it works really well with ginger beer!
You need good ginger beer though, not the watery stuff they use as mixtures if you ordered it in a bar.
Any supermarket (certainly in the UK) will do a pretty good own brand version in their “best” or “finest” or whatever range and they work fine. Waitrose does a really nice once, good and gingery and Marks and Spencers does the best.
It’s best with Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum and a squeeze of lime juice.
Dark rum is the best kind of rum I will hear nothing else.
@kittehhelp
That’s a cute kitteh! I see you’re a proponent of both that odd lip-smacking/sucking noise and foot-patting, which are both divisive issues Chez lowquacks – whether I just make silly noises and kick the cats or show affection to them in an entirely reasonable way being the matter of contention.
Just after I read this post I happened to watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=i0di3uYEqH4
It’s titled ‘how to be a far-right politician’, but it sums up the MRM so beautifully that I had to share.
YOUTUBE Y U NO EMBED >:(
@lowquacks – in our house the question re: lip-smacking and foot-nudging is “Which one is the more pathetic and unavailing attempt to get feline attention?” You can see how unimpressed Mads was. 😀
S/he did love those shoes, though!
She does indeed – not sure whether it’s because of the rubbery smell, a foot smell (I’d just kicked them off) or just because NOVELTY. She is fond of shoes generally, the little weirdo. 🙂
“Explain to me how smaller goverment will end female hypergamy”
The funny thing is, this is a totally valid criticism of libertarianism.
I mean, it’s utter hogwash… But the root of the problem is this: what if people naturally do things that are deleterious to society? Do you just let them do it? Do you let them pollute and destroy?
True libertarian says yes, you do, because individuals acting freely will solve the problem better.
Everybody else shakes their head and points out that you can influence individual behavior through taxes, laws, regulations, etc.
Substitute pollution for female hypergamy. Libertarianism relies fully and utterly on individuals making better decisions alone than as a whole… which has been shown time and time again not to be the case.
So, female hypergamy–which is not really a thing, and if it was, I think we’d all be totally cool with it and it’d be good for society–stands in for actual problems. He’s right. Smaller government doesn’t solve pollution. Smaller government doesn’t solve pay inequity. Etc., etc. It’s a hand-wave to say it does.
The dude is THIS CLOSE to a lucid thought–but he wraps it up in the total non-thing hypergamy.
i may be too late for Bitter Snuggle Drinking Time but i am clearly not too late for our latest talking cat. Justaloser, who’s a good kitty? WHO’S A GOOD KITTY??? It almost sounds like human-speak!!
Reminds me of this cutie:
And shoecat is adorbs 😀
lurker here with boozy trivia I just learned
I was looking up a recipe for tonic water (I DIY hardcore) and learned the classic G&T was invented to make taking malaria medicine easier. The quinine is in the tonic, of course, the gin was added so patients wouldn’t mind drinking it.
There are actually people in the comments of that cat video pointing out that it’s fake.
Oh youtube.
@TKUH, that’s what one of my family’s cats does to people’s hair if he or she has been in a chlorinated pool. There is much purring and drooling involved, too.