NOTE: As of April 4, 2014, the original site and its individual profiles have been taken down; a new site with an apparently similar purpose is evidently being built to replace it, but it’s not yet functional. You can see an archived version of the site’s main page, and its list of “bigots” using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, though you’ll need to manually edit the URLs of the “bigots” listed to see the archived profiles. (Replace each %20 in the URLs with an _ .)
Some of the women profiled on the site as “bigots” included:
Actress Katherine Heigl, who was put on the site after making a humorous public service announcement for the site Funny or Die promoting the spaying and neutering of pets. Register-Her charges her with “endors[ing] male targeted sexual mutilation.”
Feminist blogger Jessica Valenti, the author, most recently, of “Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness,” who was put on the site for several newspaper columns that the site misrepresents in an attempt to show that she is guilty of “an ongoing pattern of anti-male bigotry and advocacy for the eradication of constitutional rights based primarily on sex.” A Voice for Men has also labeled Valenti a “child abuser” for supporting feminist causes, and on one occasion posted candid photos it claimed were of her in an attempt to cause her embarrassment. If you look at the archived version of the site’s main page, you will see a picture of Valenti alongside photos of convicted rapists and murderers, all underneath the headline “Why Aren’t These Women In Prison?” Valenti has not, of course, committed any crimes.
A number of young women who attended a protest against Men’s Rights icon Warren Farrell at the University of Toronto. Register-Her used Twitter Tweets from some of the women, clearly intended as jokes, as evidence of genocidal intentions towards men. In an article on A Voice for Men, an anonymous writer even attacked one of these women for Tweeting a picture of a poster which declared “it is important to have someone’s consent before sexual activity.”
Site founder Paul Elam and other writers on A Voice for Men make no bones about their desire to ruin the lives of their foes. Indeed, the site’s much-referenced slogan is “Fuck Their Shit Up.”
In one post, Elam warned one critic of Register-Her that:
I find you, as a feminist, to be a loathsome, vile piece of human garbage. I find you so pernicious and repugnant that the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection. …
[Y]ou fucking moron. Your only real hope is to keep your mouth shut and pretend AVfM and register-her.com does not exist for as long as you can. Because, as you can see right now, anything you say or do will be thrown back in your face like holy water on a vampire.
We are coming for you, and we are coming for all the liars out there that have been ruining people’s lives with impunity. …
You are SO fucked.
Register-Her was clearly a major part of Elam’s program to “Fuck Their Shit Up.” The “registry” was heavily promoted on A Voice for Men, which linked to a number of “featured offenders” in its sidebar – all of them so-called “bigots,” none of them the criminals that Register-Her claims to really be about. A banner ad for Register-Her depicts a bloody knife. The tagline: “TRUTH is the real bitch.”
Elam’s idea of exposing the “truth” seems to involve publishing photographs and the personal information of his targets, whether these are alleged “false accusers” or simply feminists who have offended him. On the A Voice for Men internet radio show, Elam promised that:
If Mary Jane Rottencrotch out there wants to say that her husband beat her just for the sake of gaining leverage in a divorce he will now have a resource where he can come and post your name, your picture, your work telephone number, your address, perhaps even your route you take to get to work, if you bother to have a job.
While Elam has yet to make good on the threat of posting information on women’s routes to work, posts on A Voice for Men promoting the profiles of so-called “bigots” are filled with threatening language and vague intimations that further information will be revealed. In a post announcing the site’s campaign against the University of Toronto protestors, Elam wrote this about one of his targets:
We have her image and know her general location. We will identify her and profile her activity and name for public view.
We will not stop there, or just with her. And while we will not publish our complete intent, we are dogged in our efforts. …
We have no more sympathy for your agenda of hatred and exclusion than for a plantation owner’s rationale in the Antebellum South for justified ownership of another human being.
A Voice for Men’s posts about the targeted women are also filled with bizarre and hyperbolic accusations. In a post about a college student who had jokingly Tweeted that her “political position” was “kill all men hail satan,” and who in another tweet suggested she might get a tattoo reading “misandry,” one of A Voice for Men’s many pseudonynmous “agents” wrote:
She doesn’t just hate men; doesn’t just want them dead or silenced or marginalized or ignored. She at least entertains the idea of permanently marking her skin with that hatred, like a convict signaling gang affiliation.
“Agent Mauve” makes clear that he hopes to ruin the life of the young woman by putting her on Register-Her:
[T]his will be the beginning of [name removed]’s real legacy; where she can revel in the full and permanent notice of her deeds, and the lesson she is providing to the world about the nature of feminism, and the etiology of hatred. And so that anyone who ever does an internet search on her name again will be aware of it.
So far, A Voice for Men’s campaign against the Toronto protesters seems to be having what one can only assume is the desired effect. On A Voice for Men’s Facebook page, a commenter refers to one of the protesters as an “evil twisted little piece of dogshit,” adding: “I hope she suffers a fatal injury before she can go out and ruin peoples’ lives like she seems determined to do.” This comment earned several “likes” from A Voice for Men’s readers.
In the Spring of 2012, Register-Her was profiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that tracks hate groups, as part of a larger feature on the so-called “Men’s Rights” movement. Writing in the SPLC’s Intelligence Report, Arthur Goldwag described Register-Her’s modus operandus and its effect on one targeted woman:
Elam’s site can be frightening to its targets. In one case, he offered a cash reward to the first reader to ferret out a pseudonymous feminist blogger’s real name. In another, Elam singled out a part-time blogger at ChicagoNow who describes herself as a “vegetarian park activist with two baby girls.” The woman’s mistake was to write about her discomfort with male adults helping female toddlers in the bathroom at her daughter’s preschool. The blogger conceded that she was being sexist, but wrote that “I’d rather be wrong than find out if I’m right.”
After the woman was listed, she was widely attacked on men’s movement sites. “I don’t always use the word ‘cunt’ to describe a woman,” one poster raged, “but when I do it’s because of reasons like these.” Shocked, the “Mommy blogger” took down her original post and apologized for her “demonization of men.”
It wasn’t enough. “You targeted fathers, and just fathers,” Elam rebuked her. “It strikes me that you have never really been held to account for any of your actions in life. It is quite likely that the concept of complete, selfless accountability is just completely foreign to you.” Over at the Reddit Mens Rights forum, another poster fumed: “This entire episode should be a warning to all those male hating feminists out there who believe that they are safe screaming their hate messages on the web. Finally, they are held accountable for their hate messages and finally the rest of the world will find out exactly what type of depraved people they really are.”
That’s hate, and that’s precisely the sort of reaction Register-Her seems designed to provoke.
—
I encourage readers to link to this piece on their websites, so as to make sure that people understand what Register-Her was really all about.
Nothing with a barbed penis needs to have a sex life.
Not one that involves anyone else, at least!
“People are never tarnished to the degree the MRM claim they will be. Look at all the celebrities who have been accused – or even convicted of – rape. The stories told by the MRM always boil down to ‘a man was mildly inconvenienced – BUT WHAT IF IT WAS WORSE?!’. I honestly would like to say it’s different but a man who’s accused on suspicion of sexual assault isn’t actually going to be treated worse than a man who’s accused on suspicion of embezzlement or serious assault. But no one is suggesting reducing the rights of victims of theft or battery, are they?”
-Thenat
Hmmmmm, I disagree. Rape, along with just a few other crimes gets people a viscreal reaction. Imagine sitting down with a friend, and they tell you they were in prison for tax evasion, or drug use, or a weapons violation. You might view them differently, sure, but you wouldn’t necessarily terminate the friendship. If they told you they killed someone, molested a child, raped someone, you would never speak to them again.
Besides, a media circus isn’t just “inconvinience.” It gets a persons name plastered on the news. Usually with little followup if they’re found innocent. And I don’t get your last sentence.
Hellkell,
Kobe is a pretty good example! It was a false accusation, and his name was dragged through the mud.
And Seligman was the name of one Duke Lacrosse player. Krystal Magnum was the accuser. Thats off the top of my head. Remember how their season was cancelled? Or how one did in fact lose a job because of his name? You want to say that that isn’t important?
The Kitteh,
Red herrings may work on other people, but I am not other people. People do x to women, so y to men isn’t a problem! Yeah, thats a logic fail.
And being a rape apologist? Ugh, how about no. Maybe that makes it easier for you to dismiss my point because it contradicts your worldview, but that isn’t a true statement.
“You want to tell Brian Banks that a half decade of his life isn’t important to you because you want to protect the people who lied?”
See, reframing arguments other people never made doesn’t make sense, does it?
pecunium
The system isn’t perfect. You know it. I made a suggestion, and conceded to thenat’s counter. So, what can you suggest? I don’t think its enough for someone to find a flaw. You found a flaw, fine. Find its solution.
Guys are getting wrongly accused. You can’t say it doesn’t happen. It may not be an epidemic, I can concede to that, but thats no justification for letting people get tarnished.
Why is your standard that it should be double the false accusations before we do something? That seems arbitrary.
And telling me to grow up. pecunium. Don’t. You don’t look any more mature for saying that.
“Are the commenters at AVfM angry, bitter people who just want to steep in their angry bitterness forever without ever doing anything to make the world a better place for anyone…”
Pot, meet kettle.
So things are no worse for those accused of rape than those accused of other crimes. To be honest, with all the arrests for sexual offences, there’s very rarely a media storm – usually only if there’s a lot of victims or the person is a celebrity. And as we’ve seen with celebrities, it’s not really any kind of obstacle to them.
‘Arrested on suspicion of’ =/= ‘actually did’.
Evidence or GTFO.
@Diogenes
I mostly see people talking about music and cooking and cats and making occasional jokes about misogynistic dickheads or trading anecdotes here, actually. Easily one of the friendliest places on the internet.
And this is why all the high-profile men accused of rape have no friends, because everyone abandoned them! I mean, think of poor Polanski, nobody in the movie business ever spoke to him again.
Well, to be fair, we’re not very friendly to Diogenes, but that’s because his personality and arguments are made of fail.
Aww, you’re going to bring up how terrible false accusations are, ring all the MRM bells about such, and then ignore the bell labelled “so let’s make it harder (than it already is) to report rape”? There’s a reason you were called disingenuous, and this is it.
“Guys are getting wrongly accused. You can’t say it doesn’t happen. It may not be an epidemic…”
My precious little naif, the point was that it doesn’t happen any more often than it does with any other crime; which, contrary to your opinion on the matter, does not somehow tarnish the accused forever. “Big Ben” is still the QB (despite his age and some promising Pitt players), Assange is playing a hilarious game of diplomatic immunity to avoid even being questioned, the Duke players? Can you name even one of them? Because I can’t, and I suspect most people can’t. Rape cases involving less famous people only make the news if the crime was particularly henious, or otherwise likely to sell a story.
Meaning that it’s generally the victim’s name that’s plastered in the media and smeared for her actions (or his, though I haven’t seen the media smear a male rape victim). Was she drinking? What was she wearing? She was alone with him? She was alone with more than one man?! She’d had sex with him before?!
Shit dude, Big Ben admitted to having rough sex with a woman who was too drunk to know how she got her head smashed up badly enough to need stitches. That shit is de facto rape, and he admitted to it. Was his life ruined? Nope, he wasn’t even suspended from as many games as they were going to suspend him from.
“Why is your standard that it should be double the false accusations before we do something? That seems arbitrary.”
It needs to be more than the average rate of false accusations for crimes of all types, by a margin of error that reduces the probability of the result being due to chance to under 1% — and no, I’m not pulling that out of my ass, that’s your stats 101 lesson for the night. If the rate is no higher than the general rate, than focusing on false rape accusations, as opposed to false accusations in general is, at best, a waste of resources; in practice it’d be a wonderfully asinine example of secondary victimization.
I mean I’ve been up for an hour and a half this morning and I’ve replied to someone’s email interviewing me for their dissertation, planned a lesson for my new tutoring job*, bought a present for someone and planned a fundraising gig for a feminist charity.
All without getting changed out of my PJs yet, and I know a lot of the regulars here are a lot more productive than me. If anyone appears bitter to you it’s probably because they don’t relish having to once again explain very simple ideas to the terminally dim, such as yourself.
(*OT for nice people – *excite face*)
well I guess, according to DTC, that my 15years of working with homeless men and women counts for jack shit in trying to make the world a better place.How deluded of me to imagine that I was trying help my community.
and those kitten conversations, recipes and general chit chat…how did I miss the bitter stew in which we were all swimming?
thank goodness DTC is here to enlighten us.
Aww you apparently do know the Duke case, you devote a whole section of brain cells to remembering that? Or is part of your brain devoted to false // unproven accusations in general? The guy who lost a job? Welcome to the world of a few thousand people in the current economy, it really isn’t the end of the world.
As for Kobe, yeah, we remember him being accused, we also remember him being cleared. And that many jokes about sex contracts and how evil women are resulted from that case, while little, if any, damage was done to Kobe’s career.
Oooh it’s time for Spot That Fallacy!! First up, what is a red herring you ask? Why, let me tell you!
Care to pick which variety of herring this is? Canned or salted? (Note, I do not eat fish and have no idea of herring is either canned or salted.)
As for “people do x to women, so y to men isn’t a problem” I believe kitteh was addressing your violation of this fallacy —
“And telling me to grow up. pecunium. Don’t. You don’t look any more mature for saying that.”
*dies laughing* pecunium doesn’t need to look more mature, he does it just fine already. You, on the other hand, might want to take some lessons in not looking like a naive fool.
If the stew is bitter you probably burned the garlic. In which case Manboobz is once again here to help you with cooking tips and consolation kitten videos.
Meanwhile, our friend Diogenes? So bitter, and in a way that’s not so easy to fix.
Oh and FYI oh disingenuous naif? My former roommate was arrested on murder and kidnapping charges years before I knew him — he rolled on his brother and his brother’s friends. All depends on why they were arrested and what they did afterwards.
“and those kitten conversations, recipes and general chit chat…how did I miss the bitter stew in which we were all swimming?”
It was one of the recipes, I think I saw “bitter stew” a few pages back, right between “mouse shaped potatoes” and “squid shaped hotdogs”
I can’t fucking believe we are still having this conversation about rape. It’s been going on for decades.
I’m called disengenious because of an argument other people read into what I wrote? Interesting.
I never addressed or advocated making rape hard(er) to report. I said rape shield laws should be extended to both parties. Its not an outrageous idea. A false accusation is damaging. Don’t try to redirect this into a red herring about rape victims being publicly questioned. Thats a different topic for a different time. Don’t say a false accusation isn’t all that bad. If it wasn’t there wouldn’t be any more anger over it than other crimes. But notice how the people who were exonerated seem pretty mad about it?
lowquacks’ bitter stew:
– chop 4 bitter melons; sear briefly
-place in a pot
-add bottle each of peychaud’s and angostura bitters
-thicken with bitter quinoa flour to taste
-allow to seethe for 30-40 minutes
-serve with a pint of bitter
@Diogenes
Why only for rape?
Because rape is the only crime that hinges on the possibility of a woman’s word being believed over a man’s, and that’s totally unacceptable to sexists.
You’re called disingenuous because you refuse to acknowledge common parts of the argument you put forth. At the least you need to address them, say that you don’t think that’s a good idea, or something — simply acting like you’ve never heard such a thing is why you’re being called disingenuous (note the spelling too btw)
“I never addressed…making rape hard(er) to report.” — yes, we’re aware. This is a problem as it’s a common factor in the argument you’re failing to make. An argument we’ve all hard dozens, or even hundreds, of times before.
And for the love of all the fish in the sea, learn what a red herring is; I gave you a link, use it.
“Don’t say a false accusation isn’t all that bad. If it wasn’t there wouldn’t be any more anger over it than other crimes. But notice how the people who were exonerated seem pretty mad about it?”
Please do cite how that varies from being accused of any other crime. Do not just claim that it’s worse than tax evasion, use assault or a similarly violent crime. People who are exonerated of anything are generally pretty mad about it.
It’s not worse than other crimes. There’s not more anger in the public about it. False reporting of rape is not higher than other crimes.
Can we talk about something else now, everyone who’s not Diogenes?
I just got a new second job tutoring in my degree subject. It’s the first time I’ve used it since I graduated (thanks, recession) and I am all sorts of scared/excited. I only actually registered to do it five days ago and I already have my first pupil on Friday.
What other good things have happened to people this week?
apparently soy bean paste is good for bitterness:
bitter stew recipe