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.
Hey, I’m about to go on vacation! I leave Wednesday. Yippee, first one in two years!
Heaaaad and shoulders, knees and hoes, knees and hoes…
Perhaps the bees don’t sting you because they recognize you as part of the hive.
When I die, I’ll go hoes up!
Another funny comment from that same r/mr thread:
Really? Clubs and knives? They have a certain flair for embellishment.
“The feminists had flamethrowers and trained attack pumas, and all we had was the courage of our convictions!”
It’s up to “clubs and knifes [sic]” now? Next some feminists will show to portest them with tactical nukes, and that’s real.
Portest? Reading MRA writing makes you dumber, trufax.
The clubs are definitely new. I’ve really got to draw that comic; that story is the gift that keeps on giving.
gender: If Lepine is a symbol of “Men’s Rights” then Solianas is a symbol of Feminism.
I am intrigued by your ideas, and would like to see how you got there.
See, Solanas, never killed anyone because they were male. She shot Warhol over a personal dispute, related to art. Moreover she didn’t publish that manifesto. Nor was it a feminist who did so. It was a guy who saw money to be made after she shot Warhol.
But… go and find me the relative trumpeting of her manifesto on say, Feministing, or Jezebel; show me the linkage it gets, as compared to Ball, or LePine. Show me the feminist sites saying she’s a hero.
Show me the people who are in the mainstream of feminism who laud her.
Then I might be willing to say your argument has some merit.
But… this is the important part, She didn’t go on a mass murdering rampage. LePine did, and the MRM is cool with that; says in fact he did it to “fight sexism”.
And you are cool with them doing that.
So you are an asshole.
@ augochlorella
I’m pretty sure Lepine did not identify with MRAs (was it even a thing in 1989?). So it wouldn’t be fair to link him to MRAs only because he’s a sick f*ck who killed women. However, there are a lot of serial killers who killed women based on their gender and no one links them to MRAs. I think the main point in linking Lepine and MRAs boils down to a few other things.
[TW]
1-He wrote a manifesto before the killing, justifying his action based on feminism, and women being allowed to become engineers (thus “stealing” precious men jobs – this was before affirmative action)
2-In the class, he asked the men to leave. Those men (one of whom killed himself the following year) report that Lepine was ranting about feminists, and some women who were pleading for their lives said they were not feminists, and he replied that they were just by virtue of attending an engineering class while woman.
3-He had a list of other feminists he wanted to kill
4-When MRAs write about Lepine being a misunderstood hero on “mainstream” MRA blogs like AVfM, a large proportion of comments are sympathetic. Not all of them, but I think the majority who see this story as somehow an epic tale of a hero oppressed because of his gender is troubling.
I didn’t quote exactly what he wrote or said, but all this information is easy to find online. So it seems to me that Lepine did not associate with MRAs, but specific group of MRAs identify with Lepine.
PEMRA: @Bee- Okay, but my issue is that feminism still has a monopoly on *gender*
Our issue is that the MRM is full of hateful douchecanoes. You seem to be fine with that (yeah, you mouth a few, “I disagree with them”, but 1: you don’t say what about. 2: You think r/mr,and AVfM are, “moderate”. 3: You have a stupid (and delusional) idea that SRS = hategroup, and SRSsucks = SPLC. So all in all, your protestations are worth the paper they are printed on).
. Also, other equality movements are often sympathetic to feminism, and not MRAism,
That would be because the MRM is full of hateful douchecanoes.
They make each other question their ideology and think about the biases inherent in any given ideological movement.
This might be true if the MRM were a social justice movment, instead of a wankfest run by hateful douchecanoes.
You just know that an MRA was standing in the back of the room and overheard one person say to another that zie had come with zir whole knitting club or whatever to protest, and he immediately thought, “Oh noes! They’re here with clubs now!!”
katz: John the Otter alleges the signs used at the UofT protests were just camoflage. The lath they were mounted on was meant to be used as bludgeons to assault the valiant MRAs who were there to “take the argument to the streets”.
katz, I am really hoping your comic includes a trained attack puma because you’re good at drawing animals with personality. Actually you’re just good at drawing, period, and I am jealous.
I wonder if the “clubs and knives” part refers to JtO’s almost deadly confrontation with rainbow gathering feminist thugs trying to remove his posters.
pecunium-
Oh! They found out about the new “sign taped on a club” tactic?
This apex fallacy thing is one thing that really frustrates me when I discuss it with someone or read about it, since I don’t know exactly how to counter it. To me it’s obvious that if the group that has the most power is mostly made up of a certain type of people (in this case, men), this type of people will have more power to pursue their collective agendas (whatever that agenda may be). It really makes me wonder what exactly MRAs want. I mean, what is their ideal society? I suspect that many of these guys who complain about apex fallacy really wish they were on top themselves, and think that if they’re weren’t those few women there, they might have a chance themselves. But I don’t know – just speculating here.
And feminism already has an ‘ideological enemy’ to keep it in check. It’s called traditionalism, and it will probably never go away. Leave the advocating for men to them.
Side question: where did everyone get their avatars from?
And after the feminists scare off the MRAs, they struggle to take down the posters using only clubs.
I’ve tried taping protest signs to cumulus clouds, but it turns out that wooden sticks just work better for that purpose.
Have you gone censor-mad, tubby? None of my light-hearted jabs are making it through moderation anymore. Your enormous butt must be enormously butthurt.
Anyway, here’s an article of interest for you: Feminist lets the Alpha cat out of the bag.
Why it’s almost like women’s natural desires have them craving masculinity and gender-neutral equalists are full of shit!
So is Solanas is to LePine just as Swift is to Hitler and writing a murder mystery is to committing murder.
Also too and besides
Any women in a position of power is proof that women are not oppressed because they can get all the sex they want while white men holding the majority of positions of power is not proof of oppression because they can’t get all the sex they want.
Got it.
Wow, fat shaming, that’s original.
Please tell us more about how someone’s physical appearance makes their basic humanity less so.
/sarcasm. Please don’t tell us. Please go away and never come back.
“It really makes me wonder what exactly MRAs want.”
As far as I can tell, they want to claim minority status. They want to keep a tight, firm grip on their priviledge while pretending it doesn’t exist.
I think that’s right, Carly. When feminists look at the apex, and see that it’s mostly white guys, we wonder why it doesn’t reflect the actual demographics about society. When MRAs look at it, they wonder why they, personally, aren’t up there.
I think the really confusing thing with ‘apex fallacy’ is that it could make sense. When I read the title of this post, I thought it would be coining a fallacy for when people look at a black president or a woman CEA and say “See! All equal now! We don’t ever have to think about *ism again!” But it’s not. It’s something dumb.
An Inconvenient Turd – you’ve linked to a light-hearted op-ed piece by a woman in Huff Post. That’s your stunning takedown of feminism?
(Holy Fuck, how stupid are these guys?)
I tried to tape my protest signs on nunchucks, but I’m just going back to the wooden stick technology too.