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.
Joe also misses another basic fact: the blog header doesn’t say “MRA: I mock them.” It says “Misogyny: I mock it.” Doesn’t matter whether Joe thinks he’s an MRA or not; he’s a misogynist. That’s all that’s needed.
Too many big words for ya, Joe?
@Fade: But, according to MRA’s, by giving women the right to vote, feminism took away men’s right to vote, because now all men’s votes are being cancelled out by wommens!!
@Amused:
“Well, of course Joe. All mature people know the solution to any problem faced by men is a nubile slave in every man’s home, and a pair of boots to kick her with.”
I now have an image of Joe dressed up like something from a Gor novel. Thank you for that, I may never be able to unsee it.
@hellkell: Careful. Next he’s gonna do a Tom Dane and say English isn’t his first language, and how dare you mock his excellent English, you monolingual feminist.
@The First Joe:
Apologies, I am bad at phrasing myself in a lack of redundancies as I prefer making sure that the statements that I make do not lack of proper identifying tangents so as to allow anyone reading my posts further down the line when the discussion has moved on the opportunity to properly understand what I was attempting to communicate by my statements, viz a viz, the topic at hand – although I do understand the extra use of sometimes redundant words sometimes tend to obscure, even obfuscate, yes perhaps even obliterate my point, I do hope that it is not too much of a strain on peoples eyeballs to take the extra time to read the statements and opinions I happen to possess at the time, although, come to think of it, I was not directly referencing you in there at any one point, my topic was a discussion of notion of the Apex Fallacy, which is a little overwrought, perhaps, but, as I mentioned, unrelated to you and yours, even if I am honored you would take the time to respond to me.
In short:
“Okay, no worries”
@Kittehserf
Except no impressive abs or biceps. Sorry.
You’re forgetting, word mean things.
You replied with this: “I never said anything in that list of Feminist successes was fair or unfair.”
Then your next sentence is this: ” All I said was, they are examples of power and privelege gained through feminism. Which is what feminism is, and does, and what it is successful at, QED.”
Then:
“Feminism gets more power, for feminists. That’s it’s form and function.”
I didn’t assume anything. You posted a list of what you percieve to be priviledges. Then you wrote that all women are feminists…otherwise, that list of yours wouldn’t apply to non-feminist women.
Dude, I’m not asking for your address and phone number. I’m asking you to identify work, campaigns, etc. that successfully address the very real problem of male-on-male violence. Because otherwise you just look like the kind of asshat who wants to use male-on-male violence against feminism. Unless you can make a coherent argument that feminism makes male-on-male violence worse, there is really no reason for you to come here and yell at us about it.
and Fibinachi, sorry about your friend. And if Joe doesn’t want to read your posts, well, it’s his loss.
Oh, wait, now I get it. He doesn’t understand that when most people talk about activism they mean doing something for other people, for an entire demographic or for society, rather than something for themselves.
How very odd.
Silly typo: WORDS mean things.
@Amused – not a chance! 😀
He’d probably also have a tinny in his hand, if his usual drunk-posting here is anything to go by.
And this is truly one of the most fucked up parentheticals ever. Joe, you’re not our FRIEND. We’re not obligated to express sympathy. Lots of people, including people we care about in this very online community, have been victims of violence. All I am offering you is a willingness to support good, decent, non-misogynist campaigns to reduce male-on-male violence, in addition to the other work I do. I can’t promise to make it my main focus, but you don’t even seem to want support — YOU JUST WANT TO YELL AT FEMINISTS. Yonkers, you are really a piece of work.
@amused – “Well, of course Joe. All mature people know the solution to any problem faced by men is a nubile slave in every man’s home, and a pair of boots to kick her with.”
Wow. I have no idea how you pulled that out of your ass!
Seriously, that feminism is (of course) NOT that answer to men’s problems, does not mean “whatever the hell mad vision of stereotyped chauvinism you can come up with” IS.
The Western world has changed, patriarchy is long dead in the West, marriage is nothing but obligations for men – men need to adapt to this new environment, and organise ourselves to protect ourselves against the things that disproportionately afflict us.
Namely:
1) suicide
2) homelessness
3) violence
Adapting to protect ourselves from these things need not have anything to do with women at all.
I know this is an astonishing concept to manboobzers, but…. not everything is about women. No, really.
One of the things I strongly disagree with lots and lots of the MRAs about is that Western men should somehow try and engineer a return to traditionalism. Even if I thought that was a good idea (I don’t) that ship has long sailed. It’s utterly futile to try and rebuild a cultural paradigm that more than half the population has rejected / dismantled for 3 or 4 generations. The old way of doing things is over. It’s time to move on.
CITATION. NEEDED. I promise I’ll read it, at the very least to tear it apart. 😉
hello chapesses and chaps, so unlike other Brits (blargh, urgh) I have actually read the whole thread before commenting.
So sorry about your friend Fibinachi, applause on the above comment 🙂
Whilst reading I gradually realised why our lonely and very angry trolls frequent.
I noticed that too, but he did broaden it to include the idea that he would try to personally protect individuals that were family members, friends, or “decent” women from violence.
Me, I just want to reduce violence period. You don’t have to be my friend for me to not want you to be murdered. I don’t want to start a campaign to “Stop Murdering People I Like!”
Are you in favor of gun control, Joe? You’re a Brit, so maybe you don’t care.
“No raping or beating up my friends and relatives!”
This is the shittiest social justice campaign ever.
@opheliamonarch
That video cracked up me, my mom, and my sister. 😉
“I know this is an astonishing concept to manboobzers, but…. not everything is about women. ”
Wow. File that under “No Shit, Sherlock.”
@Fade, can I call a troll a wanker now? I mean, I know we’ve been told by the Menz we’re making ourselves look bad, but I’m okay with that 😉
@Shiraz – yeah, your problem is that you don’t have a grasp on what the word “privelege” means.
“Then you wrote that all women are feminists…otherwise, that list of yours wouldn’t apply to non-feminist women.”
Noooo, not so, I never said that. You made that leap yourself. That second part of your statement is factually incorrect.
Advantages brought into e.g. legislation by feminists for the advantage of those feminsts, will almost always be couched as benefits for ALL women, in order to get them passed. My point is that, when feminists bring about e.g. a publically funded program to assist poor women, while those poor women will receive $X benefit, the career feminists who administer that program will get $X,000 or $X,000,000.
This goes right back to the early days when Pankhurst not only got Votes for Women passed, but also got a seat in Parliament (in kick-back for running the White Feather campaign that helped send men to their deaths during WWI on behalf of the High Up Bastards).
Anyway, you’re too busy looking for things to be indignant about to grasp the position I’m coming from, so I’ll just leave you to career madly off on your Journey of Assumptions.
@fade, sorry, also, say hi to the family 🙂