I was a little saddened to read recently that A Voice for Men — the self-proclaimed “Men’s Human Rights” site that has posted an open call to firebomb government buildings in its “activism” section — will no longer be writing about little old me.
Yes, it’s true. In a recent post announcing that he would no longer be writing or caring about journalist Arthur Goldwag, who famously took on the misogyny of the Men’s Rights movement in a piece for the Southern Poverty Law Center, AVFM’s head douchebag Paul Elam also noted that he would no longer be writing or caring about me either.
“In the early days of this site, we used to write a fair amount about David Futrelle,” Elam wrote. “He was a nice, soft target; pudgy actually.”
But now, apparently, AVFM has gotten much too important to bother with soft, pudgy nobodies like me or Goldwag or the SPLC.
We don’t mention David anymore except as a passing joke. He is just another low-end blogger with a small audience of neurotic women who talk more about cats in his comments than what he writes. It is as close to physical intimacy as the guy will ever get.
It’s a little strange how much time Elam, a fiftysomething straight man, spends thinking about my sex life, but I suppose it will be a bit of a relief not to have to read so many of these fantasies of his in the pages of AVFM. Not to mention Elam’s bizarre conspiracy theories about me — like this one. (I wonder why Elam never came forward with the proof of those allegations like he promised he would? Hmm.)
So I was a little surprised when, only one day after Elam bid me that not-very-fond farewell, AVFM’s “managing editor” Dean Esmay decided to set forth yet another conspiracy theory about me and my alleged army of evil minions.
In the midst of a long, weird, barely coherent tirade directed at a writer for Vice magazine who’d approached AVFM with some questions for its stable of female MRAs, Esmay accused my evil minions (in advance) of writing to the Viceman pretending to be female MRAs in an attempt to make female MRAs look bad:
[M]aybe … one of David Futrelle’s minions will show up in your inbox and say “yeah I’m a female MRA and I support taking rights away from women and I hate women too because we women suck, put women who have abortions in prison praise jesus blargh!” and so on and so forth, because that’s just what a whole lot of people who oppose compassion and fundamental human rights for boys and men do: pretend to be MRAs or to be quoting MRAs just to make us look bad. We’ve seen it in action more than once. At least one asshole we know of pretty much does it as a full-time gig.
Dude, I hate to break it to you, but none of my “minions” needs to pretend to be a female MRA in order to make female MRAs look bad. Female MRAs like JudgyBitch and GirlWritesWhat and TyphonBlue are already doing an exemplary job of that already. I mean, seriously, did you read JudgyBitch’s thing about pedophilia the other day? I mean, wow.
Of course male MRAs are also doing a fantastic job making themselves look terrible as well, from Warren Farrell on down to that dude who thinks “friend zoning” should be punishable by law (and the dozens of Men’s Rights Redditors who upvoted him).
But, really, no single website has done more to make the Men’s Rights movement look terrible than A Voice for Men.
Seriously, fellas (and FeMRAs), take a bow. We here at Man Boobz couldn’t do it without you. I couldn’t make up the shit you spew if I tried. (And, for the record, I don’t try.)
ATTENTION-WAY AN-MAY OOBZ-BAY INIONS-MAY: I-way am-way alling-cay off-way our-way evious-day an-play o-tay impersonate-way emale-fay As-mRAY. Ean-day Esmay-way as-hay igured-fay it-way out-way. Ease-play eturn-ray o-tay alsely-fay accusing-way apless-hay etas-bay until-way urther-fay otice-nay. And-way on’t-day orget-fay o-tay eed-fay e-thay ats-cay.
Who was saying that? Then again, I may disagree anyway, since nobody is owed a polite response to bigotry, even unintentional bigotry. Idk if I’m making any sense here?
@ Myoo
“I actually like the “MHRM” and “MHRA” things. It sounds like you’ve got something icky stuck in your throat:
MHRM
M-HRM
MMM-HRRRRRM
MUUUH-HUUURRRRRMMMM
MUUUUUUUH-HUUUUUUURRRRRR-RRRRAAAAAH *cough* *cough*”
= awesome
Nepenthe — I’m surprised this isn’t mentioned there, but the page on r*tard mentions how of course flame r*tardant is still appropriate. I mean the page on “weak” does specifically say that using “weak” as a specific counter to “strong” is appropriate (and offers alternatives of course). But yeah, the weak/strong dynamic seems appropriate while “that was weak man” is conflating boring, bad, annoying, etc, with weakness of all sorts.
Any of our commenters with illnesses that include physical weakness have thoughts though?
Nobody here. I’m sorry, I was speaking more in general and not about this thread in particular. Sorry for not explaining things too well. I just saw people saying they were leaving because they didn’t like worrying about getting jumped on, and so I was trying my best to explain the goal of a call out, how to do a call out, and how to handle a call out. It was hard for me to fully explore the topic in a comment or two.
There is a world of difference between saying that someone should have to take a psych test to get on the internet, and questioning the use of “crazy” the way Carleyblue did.
I myself was taken aback by other telling people not use use terms like that for the mentally ill when I first got here. I’ll be honest, it made me really uncomfortable at first, because I took those usages for granted in everyday speech–it’s everywhere. But the more I thought about what people were saying, it made sense not to use them.
What I did not do was have a right tantrum about not using those terms. YMMV.
QFT. I know I treated some people meaner when I had my depression, before I got meds. That doesn’t mean that I’m off the hook for what I did, or that the mean actions didn’t happen to them.
And re: calling people out. Sure, don’t be intentionally mean, but I don’t think that just being short or not being polite = being mean. It gets tiresome to see the same problematic language all the time, and not everyone really has the stamina to make their “hey, don’t do that”s sound gentle and nice
@bionicmommy
That explains it. Just was only thinking this thread for some reason. /easily confused today. Headaches do that too me.
David – if you are anywhere near as adorable as the bewigged kitty in this photo, then obviously the MRAssholes are just envious of your alpha-Kitteh!-attractiveness. And that’s real.
More like using ‘weak’ as shorthand is lazy, at least as I read the entry. Hard to disagree, actually, once I got Smith’s point.
Strange for me, though, because my head jumped right to Vatimo’s “weak thought” which is actually a positive value when compared with the kind of strength (of conviction, etc) that won’t permit uncertainty or ambiguity, allowing as it does for the unpacking and undermining of defensive and unproductive certainties.
I think it’s absurd. Yes, weakness is considered negative. This makes sense. All my experiences of weakness have been negative. (Much like all of my experiences of craziness have been negative.)
I… don’t know?
Online, I tend to be addressed with feminine pronouns more often, which is fine. I guess I communicate in a slightly feminine way? I seem to pick relatively feminine usernames fairly often… I thought Athywren was a pretty male name when I first chose it, although I guess the wren part is more feminine when taken alone? The other two names I use online end with a’s, which apparently designates a female name in most of Europe. It only bothered me once, and it was more because someone assumed that being female meant I’d be interested in some impromptu cybering. Oh, if only he’d known I’m “really” a guy!
On the other hand, aside from a few kids asking if I was a boy or a girl in school because I had *GASP!* long hair, I always get the masculine pronouns in the meatspace… which makes sense because I’m not particularly androgynous in appearance, and my wardrobe is t-shirt and jeans.
I guess ze might help for clarity, but I’ve always found that the people who need the clarity are the ones who don’t care about it. So… I don’t know, although I don’t want to be called “it,” because I’m a human being, and not a jellybean, but other than that I don’t think I might want you call me.
…tl;dr *shrug*
@ trtina
So because this site is fairly popular either the commenters should volunteer to teach any clueless person who shows up whatever it is that they want to learn (that they haven’t asked to be taught – we should just hang around waiting for them to say something wrong so we can patiently correct them like we were their mommy and they were 3 years old), or David should be the kindergarten teacher himself? Um, no. That is not a reasonable expectation. Also you know this lament could basically be summed up as “the purpose of this site has changed in a way that neither the owner or the regulars expected or want, and therefore both of the above should accept that and provide whatever service that random people might want”? If I rephrase it that bluntly does it make it more clear how self-centered and arrogant it sounds to people reading?
Also I want to point out two things. One, people here have asked many times that “crazy” not be used as a slur. Whether or not you use the word that way in your personal life, you’ve been asked not to use it that way here. Why not go along with the request that’s been made by multiple people? Refusing to do so is rude. Secondly, when you call someone who’s doing something awful “crazy” you’re implying (though you might not mean to) that they’re not entirely responsible for their behavior. Writing 3000 word screeds about how it’s totally OK to rape or beat or kill women because reasons is not a compulsive behavior that people may have a hard time controlling, it’s a choice that the person who posted the obnoxious material actively made. Stop letting them off the hook by implying that engaging with the MRM is anything other than a conscious decision made by people who agree with its basic premises.
On CarleyBlue’s question, the reason that people react the way they do to this specific use of the word crazy as a slur, or to Wonder Woman’s comment, is that in both cases the terms are being used in a way that implies that mentally ill people as a whole are horrible and can’t be trusted to do basic things like use the internet without causing harm to others. It’s the suggestion that crazy = bad person who might hurt people that’s raising people’s hackles. On the issue you have with most people on this blog being explicitly feminist…nope, sorry, we’re not going to stop talking like feminists. Which doesn’t mean that I’m telling you to go away, because in general I’ve enjoyed talking to you, but if you need the other commenters on this blog to stop being so obviously feminist in order to be happy here than sorry, that’s not going to happen, because the majority of the non-troll commenters have always been explicitly feminist.
Language fail! 😀
I don’t think I mind what you call me.
I don’t think weak is a pejorative. Strong or weak are simply relative measurements.
Weak tea is what some people like to drink and others use do describe a less than convincing argument.
So I suppose that like most measurements it can be used in various ways.
Because we humans are weak we invent tools like levers and jar openers. That is also why we help one another.
Getting weaker every day is kinda scary, but my weakness for chocolate gives me a happy.
As far as the crazy as a slur, I am deeply opposed to any use, with the possible exception to “crazy making” which describes the behavior of abusers.
Since the conversation has taken this turn, I would like to make a related observation: it seems that many people here consider “crazy” to be an ableist word that impugns or devalues people with mental health issues.
Maybe I am in the minority here, but it seems to me that “crazy” is an inherently pejorative term, and the problem is NOT that it’s used as a pejorative against, say, MRAs, but rather, that people with mental health problems accept it as a descriptive for themselves. IMHO, they SHOULDN’T!
I would NEVER describe a person with, say, depression or bipolar disorder or schizophrenia as “crazy.” I would reserve my use of that word for, say, right-wing Republican nutjobs, or the pedophile freakazoids who think preteen girls with developing breasts are somehow responsible for the drooling perverts that obsess over them.
Nepenthe — I’m having a dense moment and can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not, I’m sorry. I thought you where at first but now I’m afraid you aren’t.
In any case I’m perfectly fine with replacing weak with shoddy for arguments and whatnot. Joe, for example, doesn’t present arguments that lack sufficient logical backing, he presents shitty arguments that lack all merit, and are shoddy at best.
thebewilderness — as one of the resident mentally ill folks here, I think using “crazy making” for gaslighting in particular is entirely apt. Gods know it didn’t help my mental state any!
BigKitty — but you just described both wingnuts and freakazoids just fine without calling either crazy. And as a mentally ill person who generally calls zirself crazy…yeah, just no. I’m allowed to reclaim the word if I want.
QFT. I don’t like losing non-troll newcomers or regulars either.
But we already have a great word for adults who creep on children – pedophile. It’s a lot stronger and more direct than “crazy” too, and therefore more effective if your purpose is to call out the behavior in question.
@thebewilderness – “Getting weaker every day is kinda scary, but my weakness for chocolate gives me a happy.”
Best. Distinction. Ever. 🙂
CHOCOLATE IS STRENGTH
I’m not as strong as I used to be, or as fit – I’m weaker. I don’t see it as disparaging. A strong argument vs a weak one doesn’t strike me as saying a physically strong person is better than a physically weak one. I don’t like it when they’re used to say someone is emotionally weak, ergo of lesser value, but that’s being used of people, not abstract things, and they don’t connect for me (does that make sense?)
Aha – gotcha. Thanks for clarifying this. If people with mental issues want to reclaim the word, then I want to help, not get in the way!
Meanwhile, rightwing nutjobs and sicko pedophiles are still totally disgusting, and there are lots and lots of Exxxcellllent!(Monty Burns voice) terms to describe them. . . .
I kinda don’t know how I feel about “crazy” being offensive in some cases. Like MRAs act like they actually are crazy, thought they’re not. Like maybe hearing voices of straw fems in their head, so that’s why they’re so worked up and delusional about them. However I really doubt they are actually “crazy”, as in a mental issue.
“Crazy” to me doesn’t seem to fit pedophiles at all – they’re not “behaving in a crazed manner” or anything like it. Just the opposite, in fact: they plan what they’re doing and are very much in control of manipulating people.
I’ve certainly learned about ableism from this site, something I’d never thought about much before, and it makes me stop and think off-site, too. Not something to regret, though it does feel weird to hesitate to say that one of the kitties is having a dement when they’re tearing around the place. (Speaking of which, I wouldn’t be using the terms here that we do at home for the kitties, but how do people feel about that sort of use?)
Auggie — “are the straw feminists in your head acting up again” gets said around here a lot and doesn’t carry the baggage of using crazy as a “you are bad and you should feel bad”. I’m on the fence about calling them delusional, but they aren’t crazy, they’re assholes with some seriously flawed beliefs. (And that plural makes me want to hulk smash the English language btw)
BigKitty — thank you!