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.
I am genuinely curious as to how frothyBrit got from “morning height” to “small penis”. What happened in the strange and excitable labyrinth of his brain to link that initial comment not only to cocks, but to small cocks in particular?
Dude, if you find your morning wood fascinating I’m happy for you, but it’s rather silly to assume that everyone else has cocks on the brain just because you do.
testing… testing
my last two comments haven’t gone through
“@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.”
Well, boo, I had to imply that you don’t like any women in power…when we asked for proof of this elaborate conspiracy to de-throne all men, you mentioned there are women in positions of power. Since there is no way you cannot know that most of those positions of power are held by men, I had to assume that the small minority of female congresswomen and so on, was offensive to you.
I mean, come on, you’re a shit writer. When one is reading over shit writing, deductive reasoning will come into play. A reader doesn’t have any other choice. If you don’t want to be misunderstood, then use your words properly.
Now, tell me again about how there are no women in poverty are working shit jobs. That was interesting.
for our troll boy
let’s see if this actually works. If not, I’m gonna stop, because it’s way too much time dedicated to making a lame joke
@CassandraSays We can say what we want, he just came here to argue with the voices of the straw feminists in his head.
…which must be what happens when feminists get all those oodles of power: they achieve the ability to beam their thoughts right through the tinfoil!
“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.”
I see he deliberately left out rape. You can’t pick and choose, Joey.
@Marie
Was it pemra who was all like “Men suffer violence more than women if you leave out the kind of violence that affects mostly women”? Yeah, he and joe should totally be friends. Or argleblarge at each other, which ever comes first.
“…which must be what happens when feminists get all those oodles of power: they achieve the ability to beam their thoughts right through the tinfoil!”
Yes!!!! Our final mission has been accomplished!!!!!!!
“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?”
If someone said that on some other board, why aren’t you there fighting about it, instead of here where no one said anything of the kind?
@Shiraz
because of the HIVVEEE MIND!!!!
No women have ever lived in poverty or worked shit jobs.
Shiraz: hivemind, plus Joe needs his “gotcha” fix.
Oodles reminds me of noodles. I think I’ll take my oodles of power, boil them, then have them with butter and some pecorino romano.
Do not feed your oodles of noodles to the poodles, they’ll get sick.
@Aaliyah – Ugh’s “question” transparently contains an assertion. Just like the counter-analogy I provided.
@Hellkell – yeah, I don’t have to wear a label, because you say so. Fuck that. Not everyone who disagrees with you is an MRA per se.
Morning “height” as in morning “wood”. That’s what that reference conveys to the reader who isn’t part of your little clique.
@Fade – yeah, I don’t subscribe to your PC “abelist” bullshit either.
Also, I learned long, long ago on manboobz that there is zero point in engaging in the laborious process of providing links to references, because: not one manboobzer will ever read them anyway. So, don’t ever expect me to provide you lot with a citation for anything, I know it’s pointless.
@Gilly – there are huge numbers of feminists who are not at the apex of society who have acquired money, power and privelege as a direct consequence of feminism. I can’t believe I’m even having this argument – it’s clear to anyone that feminism has been a hugely successful movement.
You only have to look at the ridiculous grasping at things-to-moan-about that’s going on now (e.g. video games) to get that feminism has already grabbed most of the big stuff that feminists wanted.
@freemage –
1. You are incorrect. I used ad hominem correctly.
2. I couldn’t care less about what you think is rude on the internet or not.
Shiraz, just make sure you’re using noodles and not poodles. Don’t boil the poodles!
Is it a gotcha fix or a rage wank, hellkell? I dunno.
Cloudiah, if we’re all Mrs. Clinton, where are our checks? 😉
A fall-arse-y?
Very few people would hear “morning height” and think it refers to “morning wood.” Instead, they would just ask what it means.
I will not boil the poodles…only the noodles and the oodles.
…
You cannot argue a point if you are not trying to even back it up. I mean, you say “poverty is worse for men”, and then you refuse to provide us with any citation, say the only solution is to give away all our stuff because it will be enlightening, and then that there is no need for a citation because it would not make us agree with you.
So…
Yeah, you’re not exactly winning any awards here. What do you hope to accomplish?
Also, given your complete denial of sexism, I am not suprised that you do not think ableism exists. So fucking what? Saying you refuse to believe that the sky is blue during the day does not really change that. I mean, I can say “I refuse to believe in gravity”, but I’d still better not jump off any airplanes.
Marc Lepine = antifeminist.
Anders Breivik = antifeminist.
Thomas Ball = antifeminist/mra.
George Sodini = Not sure if he was an antifeminist per se, but it’s hard to imagine a guy who murders several women because he felt he wasn’t getting laid enough being cool with feminism. Also he’d attended PUA seminars.
Don’t go asking for a citation, though! You know those are pointless!
“I couldn’t care less about what you think is rude on the internet or not.”
Really? You complained about personal attacks and name calling a page ago.
@ Joey
“Morning “height” as in morning “wood”. That’s what that reference conveys to the reader who isn’t part of your little clique.
”
Um….. No. I want around for much mr. Al stuff ( that’s where it came from right)? And my first assumption was not wood.
“@Fade – yeah, I don’t subscribe to your PC “abelist” bullshit either.
Also, I learned long, long ago on manboobz that there is zero point in engaging in the laborious process of providing links to references, because: not one manboobzer will ever read them anyway. So, don’t ever expect me to provide you lot with a citation for anything, I know it’s pointless.
”
You don’t provide citations, so you wouldn’t know. Also, if you don’t bother to back up what you say, Joey, can’t you just argue with a squirrel? Or can even animals not stand you?