So some Men’s Rightsers are up in arms because the powers that be at Wikipedia just deleted a page devoted to a phony “logical fallacy” invented by a friend of Paul Elam. According to the now-deleted Wikipedia page, “the apex fallacy refers to judging groups primarily by the success or failure at those at the top rungs (the apex, such as the 1%) of society, rather than collective success of a group.”
In other words, it’s a convenient way for MRAs to hand-wave away any evidence that men, collectively, have more power than women. Mention that men hold the overwhelming majority of powerful positions in the worlds of politics and business, and, I don’t know, podiatry, and MRAs will shout “apex fallacy” and do a little victory dance. Rich and powerful dudes don’t count, because of poor and powerless dudes!
On the Wikipedia discussion page devoted to the question of deleting the apex fallacy entry, one Wikipedia editor – who voted “strong delete” – noted that
This is men’s rights activist astroturfing. The guy above [in the discussion] isn’t posting examples of its usage because they’re all on websites showcasing brutal misogyny and hateful ignorance, like A Voice for Men.
He’s got a point. When I did a Google search for the term, my top ten results (which may be different than your top ten results, because that’s how Google works) included posts on The Spearhead; The Men’s Rights subreddit; Genderratic (TyphonBlue’s blog); Emma the Emo’s Emo Musings; and a tweet from the little-followed Twitter account of someone calling himself Astrokid MHRA. In other words, five of the ten results were MRA sites, several of them with explicit links to A Voice for Men. (That “MHRA” is a dead giveaway.)
The top result, meanwhile, linked to a post on the blog of the delightful Stonerwithaboner, who doesn’t consider himself an MRA, as far as I know. But he’s still kind of a shit, and he did recently confess to being (as I suspected) the person who was going around posting comments on manosphere sites as David H. F*cktrelle, Male Feminist Extraordinaire ™.
So, in other words , I think it’s fair to say that the term “apex fallacy” has not yet achieved academic or philosophical respectability just yet.
The deleted Wikipedia page attributes the term “apex fallacy” to Helen Smith, a psychologist who is a longtime friend to A Voice for Men, and dates it to an interview Smith gave to the odious Bernard Chapin in 2008.
But the idea seems to be a simple reworking of a bad idea that’s been floating around in Men’s Rights circles for a lot longer than that.
Back in the 1990s, New Zealand Men’s Rights Activist Peter Zohrab came up with what he called the “Frontman Fallacy,” a notion he spread via the alt.mens-rights newsgroup on Usenet and elsewhere; the term has been widely adopted in Men’s Rights circles since then. As Zohrab defined the term,
the Frontman Fallacy is the mistaken belief that people (men, specifically) who are in positions of authority in democratic systems use their power mainly to benefit the categories of people (the category of “men”, in particular) that they belong to themselves.
So, in other words, if you mention that men hold the overwhelming majority of powerful positions in the worlds of politics, business, and podiatry, MRAs will shout out “frontman fallacy” and do a little victory dance. Rich and powerful dudes don’t count, because of poor and powerless dudes!
Like the extremely similar “apex fallacy,” this idea is rather too silly and facile to count as a real fallacy, but it has proven quite popular with MRAs. Looking through the google search results for “frontman fallacy,” I see links to a wide assortment of MRA sites using the term, including AVFM, Genderratic, Stand Your Ground, Backlash.com, Toysoldier, Mensactivism.org, Pro-Male Anti-Feminist Tech, Fathersmanifesto.net, Mensaid.com, and some others. Like “apex fallacy” it hasn’t made much progress outside the Men’s Rights movement.
What’s interesting about this to me is that this is not the only bad idea that Peter Zohrab has ever had.
Indeed, Zohrab had some extremely bad ideas about Marc Lepine, the woman-hating antifeminist who murdered 14 women at the École Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989.
While Zohrab, to my knowledge, never explicitly justified Lepine’s killings, he described the massacre in one notorious internet posting as an “Extremist Protest Against Media Censorship.” Of Lepine himself, he wrote
I bet you don’t know he wasn’t a misogynist – because you have been conned by the media (as usual). In fact, he was a Men’s Rights activist (albeit an extremist one), and one of the things he was protesting about was media censorship.
Zohrab went on to say that it was clear from Lepine’s writings – or at least writing alleged to have been written by him — that
he [was] against Feminists — not against women — he clearly states that he is protesting against various issues which are aspects of Feminist sexism.
Indeed, Zohrab seems not only sympathetic towards Lepine’s “cause” but seems to feel that he was being unfairly misrepresented:
The write-ups on Marc Lepine concentrate on character-assassination. They take things out of context, in the same way that fathers are slandered in the divorce/family court, in order to deprive them of custody or access. …
Marc Lepine was not only not sexist, as the media stated – he was actually fighting sexism!
Lots of MRAs love talking about the “frontman fallacy” or the new and improved “apex fallacy.” They don’t seem much interested in talking about Zohrab himself.
Like it or not, MRAs, this man is one of the leading figures in the emergence of the Men’s Rights movement online, and in the intellectual history of the movement, such as it is.
If I were a bit more paranoid, I might wonder if the emergence of the “apex fallacy” was some sort of an attempt as a rebranding, an attempt to push the “frontman fallacy” and its creator, the old, odd duck Peter Zohrab, with his embarrassingly sympathetic feelings toward a mass murderer of women, down that famous memory hole.
P.S. Don’t read the comments to that MensActivism.org posting, unless you want to get really depressed.
@Shiraz – another transparent effort to control the frame. I said: feminism has been successful in getting feminists money, power and privelege.
You tried to skew that into some bullshit you made up about what you thought I was “implying” = strawman.
@Archeo – you mean Mark Lepine the nutcase mass-murderer? Errr, generally I don’t consider the viewpoints of mass-murderers as having any real merit…
because….wait for it….
they’re mass murderers.
In fact I’ll go further – just being a one-off murderer or an attempted murderer* is plenty enough for me to disqualify you from consideration as someone with a valid POV about ANYTHING.
(*e.g. Hugo Schwyzer, by his own admission)
I don’t consider myself to be an “MRA” – because, to be honest there are far, far too many nutters in the “movement”. e.g. here in the UK – Tom “You are all WHORES! And the chairs are too hard!!” who’ssecondnameIforget.
As you might be gathering, the number of people whose opinions and POV I consider to be worth listening to are fairly small.
The main value I get out of reading around is not so much the commentariat as the occasional links to research (carried out by gov’t depts or such, who do have their own agenda, natch, but that’s fairly predictable.) and news that I might not otherwise come across.
Well, hellkell, we’ve taken all their oodles of power and doomed them to live in a
FEMA campcraphole sink estate/housing project, after all. It’s just one more step from forcing them to spend their days sitting on hard chairs in rooms with scented motherfucking candles. All in shades of pink, of course, because pink is the color of femtalitarniansm.And that’s real.
Shiraz, all women are Hillary Clinton.
Well, look on the bright side, even if the trolls aren’t reasonable at least they’re different! Today we have both frothing rage troll and wall of blah oh god won’t someone please talk to me troll.
@ cloudiah
I Am Hillarus?
@Joe
Come on, man you don’t need to be ableist to point out that lots of the MRAs are sexist pieces of shite.
Ps, where’s my citation? 🙂
@Bee – wait – did you just stoop to a “small dick” insult!? Bwhahahahaah!!
*slow handclap*
Seriously, how do you expect to ever have any credibility, ever?
@Ccassandra says
Sadly, I am in the state of rating trolls now. I think that pemra is less annoying that Joe because at least pemra pretends to engage sometimes, whereas joe’s idea of a rebuttal is “give away all your possessions, it’s enlightening”
hoethehoedeohdohoe:
1: Misusing ad hominem in a discussion about a bogus fallacy has GOT to be worth some kinda points. Please find the place where those points are redeemable and purchase for yourself one clue.
2: Contrary to your apparent opinion, much like the rest of the world, this conversation did not begin with your arrival in the thread. If you had bothered to exercise the least bit of internet courtesy, you would have noted the mockery being made of a particular MRA douchecanoe for his incessant use of the term “hoe” every other word. Since, quite frankly, all you MRAs really do look alike on the internet (because so few of you say anything original that wasn’t posted here several times over the years), it was pretty much guaranteed that your nick was going to get similar mockery–because, as you apparently failed to notice, hoehoehoe, that’s our purpose here–mocking hateful asshats such as yourself.
Oh shit, he just mentioned HUGO SCHWYZER! He’s our idol!
Not.
Feminism has resulted in some women achieving positions of wealth, power and prestige (and yes, even “privelege” sometimes).
Funny thing, though. There was this person I found on the internet who told me that I shouldn’t evaluate the condition facing all members of a given group based on the very small number of individuals from that group who had achieved relative positions of wealth, power and prestige, because the experiences of those very few individuals had actually little or nothing in common with the rest of the people from that group…
@Fade – did you ever ask the men around you what dangers they faced in that situation?
Or the things that men were warned to look out for?
Why do you assume that men weren’t raped there?
Did you ever look into the rate at which men were beaten / stabbed / shot / mugged / killed in that area?
If you look at the stats in general, men are something like 3 to 4 times more likely to suffer street attacks by a stranger (other than rape) up to and INCLUDING being murdered.
Now I have heard it argued by feminists (on another board) that men’s deaths are not as bad as the suffering of women who do not die, because “once they’re dead their suffering is over”. Do you subscribe to that point of view Fade?
Oh no, I know what “Shorter Joe” means. I was just referring to the part of the thread where Joe either pretended not to know or actually did not know.
Again, hilarious with the not getting it thing. But I’m starting to think you’re not joking, and that makes me very sad.
“Morning height” has nothing to do with dick size, Joe. We don’t care about the size of your dick, just the ARGLE BARGLE and the lack of ability to make an argument or provide citations for your claims.
Joe: you simple dipshit, Bee was not making a small dick joke. Can you read? Like, at all?
Oh, and you are an MRA, deny the title all you want. If it walks like a shithead and talks like a shithead, it’s probably an MRA around here.
@gilly – you seem to be new here, so you’ll have missed out on the thread where I disagreed vehemently with Tom “Whores! Chairs!” Thingy.
Particularly on his very unpleasant attitude to sex workers.
“Shiraz, all women are Hillary Clinton.”
We are Hilary Clinton you will be assimilated!!!!! Eleven
Hi everyone! Have not actually read this thread, fade just told me there were trolls here.
I didn’t assume men weren’t raped before. I did assume one guy who lived there was warning us off for sexist reasons, because he said “EVEN I wouldn’t got there, and I’m a 20 year old guy”.
Now, in tiny words I shall explain: Even implies that he thinks he needs to stick it out more. Because normally, a 20 year old guy would be fine in places women aren’t. But EVEN he wouldn’t go there.
I think men’s deaths are bad, and I have no idea why you brought it up? I mean, are we supposed to randomly accuse people of irrevalent things?
First Joe, some men think that women deserve to be raped for being drunk. Do you suscribe to that view, joe?
What other board? Citation needed motherfucker.
Another lame “gotcha” attempt from Joe.
@”@gilly – you seem to be new here, so you’ll have missed out on the thread where I disagreed vehemently with Tom “Whores! Chairs!” Thingy.
Particularly on his very unpleasant attitude to sex workers.”
Don’t worry, I’ll give you the “not as despicable as you could have been award”
I also love how “men get murdered so trying to confine women via rape culture is totally not bad” according to Joe
Aw, Joe wants a cookie for not being totes evil once! DENIED.
“Now I have heard it argued by feminists (on another board) that men’s deaths are not as bad as the suffering of women who do not die, because “once they’re dead their suffering is over”. Do you subscribe to that point of view Fade?”
O o I so have not heard this one, and also, joe, you seem to be missing a citation, surprising nobody
Sure, that makes sense.
Do you also know that women are 24 times more likely to be raped than men?
That women are much more likely to be murdered by abusive partners than men? That women are also far more likely to face street harassment, rape threats, and so on?
DAMMIT! Ninja’d on the cookie! *shakes fist at hellkell*