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.
Feminist Sweden is planning to kill American men by bombing protesters!
Next protest I go to, I’m taping my sign to an unmanned drone. Unmanned because MISANDRY.
Cancel feminism, ladies! We found a HuffPo article saying that certain types of women like certain types of men!
CarleyBlue:
Well, it takes time and digging through statistics. Basically, the heart of the apex fallacy is true. Just because the men on top are doing better doesn’t mean all mean all men are doing better automatically.
For that we would look at men and women in the same socio-economic classes, of the same regions, of the same race… and see how they stack up against each other.
And when we start looking at large-scale statistics we find that men are given automatic advantages in just about every realm, right down the line. The jobs that are coded “male” pay more. When men enter jobs that are coded “female” they are lauded and promoted quicker than the women.
You see, the MRA is jumping up and going ‘aha! This fact over here doesn’t mean other facts must be so!’
Well, no. It doesn’t actually mean they MUST be so. It’s just highly likely. And everything else we examine shows it to be so.
So the whole ‘apex fallacy’ is disingenuous bullshit.
Troofy, that article — I mean seriously? Try harder, read deeper.
Why don’t you post an image of yourself, since you went there and attempted to fat shame someone. Fair is fair, yeah?And go make me a sandwich, please. I like spicy mustard.
Truthy: dance more, monkey.
Cloudiah: Apparently, the White House secretly calls them pro-womanned unmanned drones.
Also, the most Inconvenient Turd is shocked and amazed that his “light-hearted jibes” (sic) aren’t making it through.
Of course, he’s also insisted histrionically that Roosh and his date-rapey ways totally don’t represent PUA culture.
At length.
So we all know that his relationship to facts and reality is… strained.
Ah, but they have yet to discover the real danger. Posterboard leaves a very nasty paper cut!
My god given right to pitch a tantrum and piss on the carpet is being infringed upon! Oppression!! Censorship!!!
MISANDRY!!!!!
Why would I want to take down feminism? Feminists are doing a superb job of it on their own.
I’m just here because feminist irritation is so damn entertaining.
Yet another internet troll who doesn’t understand what censorship is, and what it isn’t.
Why, it’s almost as if you’re yet another pro-EP dipshit who wants to preserve the oppressive status quo with terrible research!
@ Maude LL
Thank you for the clarification.
“Censorship is not being allowed to piss on other people’s private property”
-Thomas Paine, “The Rights of Man” (1791)
[I might be paraphrasing here -ML]
The thing that really skeezes me out about this apex fallacy thing and how they want to use it for successful men is that it seems to reflect the old, old idea of men being more variable than women (more fools, but also more geniuses), which was a hip 19th century anti-woman argument.
It’s like, of course the apex fallacy only relates to men! Men are the only ones with an apex! Creepy.
“Boy’s club”, “old boy’s network”, “old school tie”, call it what you will. We’ve all seen it at work. It is the sad old system that directly contradicts the Apex Fallacy. People generally elect, hire and promote people like themselves. And in particular, middle-aged white men generally promote, hire and elect middle-aged white men.
Transparent effort to control the frame of debate by controlling permitted language: is transparent.
To whom are you addressing your incoherence, !stPoe?
“Why it’s almost like women’s natural desires have them craving masculinity and gender-neutral equalists are full of shit!”
Well, if you perscribe to Evo Psych bullshit, a woman being into an alpha is just the way things are…the natural state of things. So, why the hostility? It’s almost like you’re mad at “gender neutral equalists” (WTF?) for not being right about whatever it is you think they’re wrong about…and stupidly, you’ve come to a feminist site to bitch about it. Can you see the stupid in that?
And gosh, where’s my sandwich?
@theFirstHoe
I think you’ll find the creation of your bogus “fallacy” was in fact a way to frame debate. It got challenged, it couldn’t be defended. Welcome to the world of theorising! Defend it on its own merits, if you can, not on imagined censorship.
The concept of “Apex Fallacy” is both correct and useful. Especially for all the countless millions of men who get a totally shitty deal in life and have none of the advantages of the Apex nor of the (now extinct in the West) “patriarchy”. It’s a quick and simple way of saying:
“None of your moaning horseshit about how amazingly powerful and ‘priveleged’ men are supposed to be has anything to do with me.”
@titianblue – if you find that sentence “incoherent” I recommend you go back to school.
@Archeowotsit – no, no-one has to defend the evolution of language and ideas to you. You do not control what people get to think and say. Nor do the obviously feminist agenda ideologue editors of that Wiki. Tough shit for you.
Pretty sure it’s a quick and simple way of saying “Wahhhhhh, why won’t society just give me the status to which I’m entitled?”
@Thefirsthoe
You were awarded your PhD thesis in Critical Thinking from MRM University, evidentally.