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.
Mostly he rambled on about how Muslims are a terrible danger to the UK because some Muslims once attacked a gay man. He then got hilariously huffy when people pointed out that this was a pretty racist way to contextualize things, so I make a point of bringing it up. Huffy Joe is much funnier than “pretending to be amused” Joe.
(Obligatory explanation that, yes, I know “Muslim” isn’t a race, but criticisms of Muslims as some kind of “threat” to Western nations, especially in the context of immigration, are inextricably intertwined with racist and othering narratives. Please don’t try to bring this up again, Joe, it just looks sad.)
@Shiraz – No, you’re waiting for me to give a shit about what Pecunium has to say. I know Pecunium of old, so you’ll be waiting a very long time indeed.
Joe’s citations consisted of some videos and links to conspiracy websites, as I recall. They were thoroughly refuted, which is what Joe means when he says they were “ignored.”
Bald, unsupported assertion? Ok then. Is the CDC too misandric for you?
24 times more may be a slight miscalculation, but it’s pretty close. And in any case it means that
Thank you for those baseless assumptions. I already conceded that men, overall, are more prone to non-sexual violence. And nowhere have I said that I don’t care about their lives. I’m just pointing out that women are more likely to be murdered by abusive intimate partners than men are.
@cloudiah
Huh. He does know that people can point out flaws, biases,whatever in citations, right, and putting one up doesn’t mean mo one can disagree? Right?
No, I said I was waiting for you to respond — never asked if you cared.
Marie, I am pretty sure he thinks if he posts a link to something he found convincing, it means he wins the argument.
Joe, what are you doing to reduce or end male-on-male violence?
@cloudiah
Nuts
Joey, does that mean if I post a citation I find convincing I wim the argument? Or does it only aply to you?
I guess the reliable sources don’t back up his facts, and people poke holes in unreliable sources. Hey, Joe, ever considered not arguing if you can’t prove anything?
Or refuse to try to prove.
Oh, and I think it’s absolutely hilarious that Joe sees no inconsistency in saying this:
… after saying this:
To recap: DON’T YOU DARE TRY TO STICK YOUR “LABELS” ON THE FIRST JOE, MAAAAAAN, HE’S NOT A PART OF YOUR SYSTEM, but also don’t you dare suggest that someone isn’t a feminist if Joe says they are.
“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?”
Perhaps, like Owly, he thinks anyone’s interested in his “morning woody”?
Or, you could attempt to address the negative consequences of shitty paradigms that existed in the past, so that people no longer have to suffer from said negative consequences. What’s cool about this is that it doesn’t even require a time machine!
” Hey, Joe, ever considered not arguing if you can’t prove anything?
Or refuse to try to prove.”
I can see bringing it up when it’s something you can’t put your finger on, and would therefore have a harder time backing it up, but Joey knows what he wants to say, he’s just not accepting actual citations. I mean, if someone’s saying “x standards of patriarchy bug me as a man(since some of it does affect men negatively)” I’ll be fine with it, even venting about it, assuming they aren’t coming into a space women are talking about their issues nd derailing, but if they add ‘therefore men have it worse true facts” I’ll laugh in their face.
I hope that made sense.
Uncle Joe: @Shiraz – another transparent effort to control the frame. I said: feminism has been successful in getting feminists money, power and privelege.
Ah… but when you apply it to all women (and ya do) it’s the Apex Fallacy in Action. Hell, even if you limit it to the category of women who are feminists, it’s an Apex Fallacy. Not all feminists have positions of power and privelege.
Petard, yours; hoist upon.
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.
Then you are too stupid to deal with as a rational adult.
Bonus points for being so clueless about the local ecology as to think we value Hugo Fucking Schwyzer. I don’t discount him, on everything; he seems to be competent at the teaching of English (at least in that one of my almae matres granted him tenure in that discipline). On the subject of feminism/how to be a decent human being I do discount him. I won’t refuse to read what he has to say, but it is filtered through a fair bit of disdain.
@Aaliyah – Ugh’s “question” transparently contains an assertion. Just like the counter-analogy I provided.
Yeah, the assertion is you were challenged to do it in the past, and didn’t. This is a true assertion.
Morning “height” as in morning “wood”. That’s what that reference conveys to the reader who isn’t part of your little clique.
But Joey, you’ve been hanging out a lot; and as such have seen that it’s a common reference to a differntly loathesome person. I agree that being compared to Mr. Torvus Butthorn is no honor, and most people would find it insulting. Most people would, however, not have so much cock on the brain that height = wood. That you have some obsession with what women think of your penis that you didn’t assume (if you are so ignorant as all that) it wasn’t a continuation of the, “shorter Joe” insult you rushed to assume was being made, is sort of sad.
1. You are incorrect. I used ad hominem correctly.
<a href =http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.htmlYou are wrong. This is no surprise.
“I couldn’t care less about what you think is rude on the internet or not.”
Then why did you go off on several people for, “juvenile name calling”? Help yourself out a little; aim for consistency; if not in life as a whole, at least in one comment thread.
Bye everyone,my mom wants her iPad back;p
Have fun with the trolls, if possible.
If Joe thinks we’re all so infantile, blahblahblah, it says something about him that he keeps coming back here to prove how superior he is. Does he also hang around kindergartens telling the kids they’re not up to his manly manz intellect?
And if he’s not drunk posting, that means he’s this frothy and incoherent sober. Perhaps he should try drunk posting. It might be an improvement.
@Gametime – you’re lying again. I’m not a racist, that’s just more Bullshit Manboobzers Made-Up.
Don’t make up shit and attribute that made-up shit to me – find the post and QUOTE it, in CONTEXT.
Gametime siad:
“(Obligatory explanation that, yes, I know “Muslim” isn’t a race, but criticisms of Muslims as some kind of “threat” to Western nations, especially in the context of immigration, are inextricably intertwined with racist and othering narratives. Please don’t try to bring this up again, Joe, it just looks sad.)”
^Tortuous effort to make anything and everything = racist. FAIL.
I addressed this ridiculous relativism and in-group favouritism last time I was here.
Within Lefty / “Progressive” groups like Manboobzers there are no absolute rights and wrongs, “truth” is determined by group membership.
So, if *I* say that it’s a Very Bad Thing when some Muslims attack / harrass / beat / stab gay men (e.g. in some areas of London), because in GameTime’s mind I’m a White Hetero Man* it is bad and wrong for me to say this and gives GameTime chance to use the magic word “Islamophobia”.
(*FALSE: I’m mixed race).
Whereas Aaliyah can say that she HATES Islam, because she has told Manboobzers she is a Muslim apostate, non-white, transwoman and thus everything she says is right.
No rational person can respect people who think that truth changes depending on who is telling it.
In contrast any rational person would look at the tenants of Islam, such as: advocating the murder of Apostates, athiests, “mockers” and gay people…. and would naturally hold Islam to be a very bad thing, because:
Murdering people is Very Bad Indeed.
That I have to explain this to Manboobzers is an indication of how morally and intellectually bankrupt your position is.
A “phobia” is an IRRATIONAL fear / dislike. There is nothing irrational about a fear / dislike of people who believe that murder is justifiable**, because: whatever. It’s perfectly rational, therefore is not a Phobia.
(** and a significant minority of Muslims do hold to that literal interpretation of their religion, enough that entire nation states are run on these principles, it is NOT a vanishingly small %. And yes, some Muslims are lovely, peaceful people, despite their religion.
And yes, there are plenty of Christians and Atheists and Hindus who thnk murder is justifiable, they are Very Bad and Wrong too!)
@cloudiah – and now you’re lying about my citations.
Jesus Christ. Taking offense at ‘Shorter Joe’, and acting, presumably because somebody once said ‘You shouldn’t post drunk, Joe’, like you’ve been seriously slandered as an alcoholic?
Grow some skin and learn the fucking internet, Joe.
There’s a diff b/tween criticizing out of ignorance, and out of knowledge. Aaliyah knows more about Islam than you do. She criticizes out of knowledge.
Also, howsabout giving me your money? Since it’s a social construct and therefore not real, like gravity.*
*everyone else tell me if my poking the troll is annoying you.
Hey Joe: Most neutral observers could probably read AND comprehend the header of the site, unlike you. We mock misogyny, and you, sir, are a big fat misogynist.
Joe, it’s hard to lie about assdata, which is all your citations are.
Poor baby just needs any attention, doesn’t he?
PEMRA: @Pecunium- Reading comprehension. Go back, read TFJ’s post, and try again.
Dude… get a new routine. Not only is this one wrong, but it’s not clever.
Let me break it down for you. I’ll assume you have some education (wit, well I’ll gamble, but I’m not going to put much on the line), and won’t make it too simplistic.
This is a lesson on contextual referent.
Joe said that he completely discounts the opinon of feminists because… well because he doesn’t trust them to be honest; their bias is so great they won’t tell the truth.
He also ascribes to the belief that “The Apex Fallacy” is a legitimate concept. Why? Because some guys in the MRA came up with it (and it matches his worldview).
So… when people outside the MRM, who have no apparent connection to feminism say that the only places it shows up are MRA related; and that it’s support in the larger world is suspect (at best) and decide it’s not presently supported enough to include in Wikipedia, Joe comes here to declaim this is the result of it being So True It Must Be Suppressed!
Why? Apparently because Feminists don’t agree with it.
Are those dot’s close enough? If not perhaps this will help.
“But mom! Susie is allowed to stay up past 10 and I’m not. That’s not fair!”
This is what Joe sounds like.