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.
Oliver, while I would agree that feminism should focus on more than just privileged, usually white women getting prestigious jobs, that doesn’t mean the “apex fallacy” exists. The apex fallacy claims that white men aren’t privileged because not all white men are wealthy and powerful. A poor white person is still better off than a poor person of color. A poor man is better off than a poor woman. Bigotry is not going to go away if we just stop talking about it and I give zero fucks if confronting these issues make privileged people feel uncomfortable.
Also, you have no room to talk when it comes to civility. You got off on the wrong foot by declaring that anyone who doesn’t agree with all your opinions isn’t a real feminist or liberal,
Double ninja’d by Sparky and Trans_commie! 🙂
Hey Omar?
What part of “Misogyny. I mock it” don’t you understand?
We’re not here to listen to you or anyone else bloviating about your pet subjects, let alone be nice to you when you do. We’re here to mock misogyny.
Yes, identity politics is flawed because it tends to lead to a homogenizing analysis of oppression that privileges some perspectives over others (see: women of color who were thrown under the bus by white feminists). But the source of those divisions you speak of is white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. There’s no escaping the fact that women’s experiences under capitalism are not the same as those of men under capitalism. That’s why it becomes important to analyze men and women separately – one group has privileges the other doesn’t have.
Also, completely co-opted by capitalism? You have got to be kidding me. Anti-capitalist social justice has existed for decades, and many of its thinkers have been oft-ignored groups such as trans women of color. Radical feminism, for instance, was not invented by white women. In fact, early radical feminism – the ideology that has been oppressive to trans women like me – was actually influenced by trans women of color. There is also a rich history of thinkers who have critiqued capitalism while also factoring in the existence of other forms of oppression, such as patriarchy and white supremacy. Even to this day that tendency exists among anti-capitalists.
I don’t think Ms. Sandberg has *ever* argued *that* per se, but whatever.
I would like to point out that even an analysis of oppression that presupposes capitalism as the core system (rather than, as you say, assume that economic oppression is simply one form of oppression among many others) needn’t ignore forms of oppression that aid capitalism. There’s a difference between saying “The main system of oppression is capitalism, but women are oppressed in ways that men aren’t” and saying “There’s nothing else besides capitalism.”
I hope I’m making sense. I fear that I’m talking too much in theory-speak. X_X
Shorter Oliver – “I really really wanted an excuse to call feminists anti-equality, and look, I found one! I am so awesome!”
Bored now, Oliver.
My eyes glazed over the moment they saw Oliver’s wall o’ text.
Summary of most people’s feelings about today’s thread necro.
Brocialist – Feminists should do what I say, because I understand everything so much betteer than they do!
Everyone else – Whatever, dude.
trans_commie: Yes, you make perfect sense and that is a good thing to point out.
I don’t think Oliver Omar quite grasps the distinction between “capitalism is at the core of all oppression” and “capitalism is the only form of oppression,” though.
Thanks to Trans Com for some more civil feedback. As for how some of the Mens Rights (American libertarians mostly, right?) folks use The Apex Fallacy or the origin of the concept, I’m not commenting on them or defending them. The idea deserves to be examined aside from how it is used or abused.
My tone trolling always impresses the ladies, can you tell?
I don’t think capitalism is the core of all oppression. I think greed and ego are the core and you don’t need capitalism for that.
Fuck off, Omar. Is your reading comprehension this bad? This isn’t a site for debating your pet peeves. It’s certainly not for examining or debating MRAs’ notions, if by that you mean treating them like they deserve serious consideration. Are you really so blind to their rampant misogyny? What’s this shit about complaining about feminists on this site? Go take your mansplaining to Feministe and see how you fare there.
MRAs are the only people who are using the “Apex Fallacy.” There is no such thing as the “Apex Fallacy.” It is a completely not-true thing that MRAs made up so that when someone says, “Well, most of the people in power are men” MRAs can go, “Ha-ha! That doesn’t matter because Apex Fallacy!”
How are you going to examine a concept, named and described MRAs, aside from how it is used? How it is used is what it is. You cannot divorce it from its meaning and give it an entirely new meaning. And then expect folks to go along with your idiosyncratic meaning of the term.
I dunno though, I’m finding necro troll’s attempt at Newspeak vaguely amusing, just because I’m curious to see how well he can hide his tells.
(Not very, so far.)
Oh, silly necro troll.
Ally–do you have some cites for the origin of radical feminism. I thought it was many women from different background who started it.
Yeah, I think you’re confusing cause and effect, Omar. It’s not that women in top positions will cause more gender equality oveall; rather, gender inequality is the cause for there being less women in top positions. Female underrepresentation in top positions is a *symptom*. And if we see more women in top position then it’s a good thing, not by itself, but because it shows that the underlying causes of that symptom are at least *beginning* to recede.
Yes, that’s very fine and noble in theory, but it is just not a *practical and pragmatical* approach as how to actually help those people! As was said before, your attitude basically leads to sacrificing really existing people in the name of abstract ideals. And that apparently under the belief that we could reach some form of magical utopia if only we could (again, magically, one presumes) rid of capitalism. Both assumptions, that we can just so get rid of capitalism and that then all problems would be solved, are pipedreams. And I’m not willing to sacrifice the actual progression of equal rights for everybody for the sake of such pipedreams – and I completely reject the notions that this is what leftists should do.
It’s amazing how many ways people can find to spin the “your time will come after the revolution, ladies” line.
Shit, just admit you don’t want to think of anyone outside how they relate to your straight white dick.
@trans-commie: You manage to use theory-speak and be understandable at the same time. You are definitely a force to be reckoned with.
I’m sorry, Auggz. How should I have said that? Do tell.
Just for the record, I personally don’t think there’s anything transmisogynistic about what hellkell said. It would only be transmisogynistic if she implied that it’s not possible to be a woman with “male” genitals (or not possible to be a man with “female” genitals). But I don’t see that anywhere here.
Auggz: is it possible for you not to be a little Tumblr style dipshit?