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.
Fixed. I apologize if I’ve misgendered you, athywren.
@shigekuni No, seriously. I admit to being completely gobsmacked by Richard Dawkins’ idiotic and misogynistic reaction to Rebecca Watson’s (actually critique of some skeptic con behavior. So much so that I rather abruptly stopped going anywhere near the skeptic sites I used to frequent.
@ gillyrosebee
What? You explained it way better than I did. 😛
@ athywren
I’ve been in your shoes. I run in some video gaming circles, and the opinions of women and feminism from some of the men I’ve met have been less than stellar. There was one time where I’ve been able to have a heart-to-heart talk with a long-time male friend and gotten him to see my side (with a lot of directing to this website). For the most part, though, the men I’ve met who buy into anti-feminist rhetoric refuse to change their minds.
You know your friend better than we do, and you have the best idea of whether or not he can be convinced. I wish you the best of luck if you choose to continue the intervention, and my condolences if it doesn’t work out. I’ve found it can be pretty heartbreaking when your friends turn out to be misogynists in spite of your friendship.
Whoops! Hit post a bit prematurely there. “(actually pretty gentle) critique” is what I meant there, and I’ll add hugs and kittens as wanted/needed.
WonderWoman, if you’re still reading, please lurk rather than opting out. Also, what augochlorella said. Last night’s conversation was terrific and I’d be sorry to see you leave the site.
I am an atheist and a skeptic, and I’ve completely had it with those communities. They can do whatever it is they do without me.
Confirmation bias can be a lot of work. It sounds like your friend is willing to do as much work as it takes to maintain his hatred of feminists. You can’t help people who are willing to go to that much trouble to reject reality.
Yeah, that whole thing was quite eye-opening for a lot of people. I’d previously not spent much time on atheist sites because the overwhelming smugness annoyed me a bit, but my attitude went from “meh” to “WTF is this shit?” pretty much overnight after Elevatorgate.
Like I said earlier, there are some men who are perfectly reasonable about other issues but incredibly sexist. I what Twisty Faster says about the sex class – for a certain type of guy the assumption that women exist to provide men with sex/attention/companionship runs so deep that they just don’t apply the same sort of logic that they would to any other topic.
Woo, time delayed conversation! 😀
Yeah, we’re both internet atheists, (baby eating and everything :P) and, while I wish I could correct you, you’re right, our community is awash with the MRA stuff. It seems to have turned up since “Elevatorgate,” though I guess this is just it showing itself, but so far, none of those agreeing with the nonsense have been people who I was close to. It’s jarring. It came up around October last year in a discussion about Atheism+, which turned into me and a female forum member vs about 8 male members on the subject of how Rebecca Watson is evil and totally overreacted to a perfectly reasonable question. (see Elevatorgate) First time I really felt isolated as an atheist, and it’s when I was surrounded, electronically speaking, by other atheists… fun times. Anyway, long story short, rargh, “Y U supposedly rational people being so irrational?”
I guess I’m just too prone to putting people on pedestals, and then not wanting to take them down when they reveal themselves as flawed. It’s probably why I haven’t already given up on him, even though he rarely engages me when I do challenge his MRA comments.
Anyways, it’s 4.30am now, so I should probably sleep – gotta be well rested if I’m going to do satan’s bidding tomorrow! It’s been nice talking with you. Hopefully we’ll speak again. 🙂
re / Dean Esmay: “Brad Casey appears not to understand that the Men’s Human Rights Movement is, you know, a movement, with a whole lot of scholars and research and publications to back up its many many claims and arguments, with an enormous amount of research behind our advocacy.”
I’m still chuckling over that.
Ferrets are awfully cute BTW. I love watching them in the pet store. Though I’ve heard they can be a bit… well, pungent. Anyway, out of the question as long as I keep a parrot…
Actually, I would love to infiltrate the “movement” disguised as a FeMRA. Or as a ferret.
@CassandraSays
I’m gender neutral, leaning slightly female if I had to choose (which, meh) with male externals. But no, it’s internet only – we have the atlantic puddle separating us, but, yeah, he only knows me as a guy, though I have to admit I’ve been a little wary of any gender discussions with him. He’s come out with a few comments which imply a lack of understanding, the best of which being, “If gender is just a social construct, then sexuality must be a choice!”
Anyway, sleep now, because I’m getting fuzzy-thoughted, and eyed.
A welcome packet isn’t a get out of critique free card.
In my experience with mental illness of the delusional sort, what seems bizarre and terrifying to some people (and I’ll admit murder is on my worry list) is often an extension of the person’s lived experience and worldview. Also, depression lies convincingly, and people do all kinds of things when their depression lies to them.
A perfectionist who needs to be good, kind, loving, and wonderful, who isn’t given space to express her individuality or anything outside of those narrow confines, can do very extreme things if pushed too far. My usual assumption is, though, that the part I don’t like is not separate from the parts I do; they are all part of a system, and if something seems really uncharacteristic that means the person is under a Hel of a lot of pressure to conform to an unreasonable standard.
Personally, I’m a huge fan of identifying those unreasonable standards and saying really loudly, “HEY, THAT’S UNREASONABLE”, which is why I’m into Social Justice. I hope someday that people who start to get pushed to the point of murder will have ramps off of the Murder Superhighway to get some help – like treatment for postpartum depression which can be accepted without stigma because we are no longer a sexist, ableist society (the vast majority of women who are family annihilators are women with a high number of children in a short amount of time who are isolated and receive no mental health care; male family annihilators still outnumber female ones as far as I know but I don’t have hard numbers).
The skeptical community is right now going through a major sea change as women finally got sick of the sexism inside of it and started pointing out, “This isn’t skeptical.” The backlash from men who want women around to be their girlfriends but not to talk too much is actually not out of character for them, it is part of their character and how they’re doing it (hyper-rationalism and stigmatization of opponant as irrational and mentally ill) is also in line with how many of them handle other percieved-enemies, like Creationists and people who believe in Bigfoot. (I’m a lurker on FreeThought Blogs, what can I say?)
Also, batshit crazy… not that cool a phrase.
@CassandraSays “Eye opening” doesn’t quite cover it, at least for me. It was like the first time I was at a meeting and someone told a rape “joke”. It was like a sucker punch from an angle that I thought was well protected.
I do worry about the ‘pre-packaged’ nature of so much MRA misogynist crap. It slides in and is so conveniently bundled that younger and younger guys just seem to accept it without even noticing. And once they have internalized it, there is confirmation bias and other cognitive biases that prevent anyone looking at it rationally and noting how truly warped it is.
Yah that sounds like them. But lets face it they won’t be able to ignore you. Not only that but I am about to start a video series on YouTube that links a bunch of your articles
“the Men’s Human Rights Movement is, you know, a movement”
…and all you gotta do to join is to sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar…
…with feeling…
Ugh, it’s awful to hear about 16-year-old boys being MRAs. They’re already being influenced by a movement thriving on toxic misogyny. =[
@Wonder Woman:
On the chance you’re still reading, I want you to know I am fairly new to this community as well, and I also got called out by another member for a thoughtless remark. The best reaction to these situations is to apologize and then reflect on what one has said and why/how it has been offensive.
When I first joined online trans- related groups, I got called out a lot. And I am grateful to my critics, because hopefully I learned a little something-something.
“Also, batshit crazy… not that cool a phrase.”
Noted, I’ll work on getting it out of my vocabulary… come to think of it, I’m not sure why it was there in the first place. Sorry about that.
A quick note to the misogyny in the atheist/skeptic community that just came to me… a lot of it seems to come along with evolutionary psychology stuff. “Women evolved to create and care for children, therefore….” That’s one thing I hate about the community, evolution is fine guys, but it’s not something we should model ourselves after. Seriously, evolution did the best it could do, but we can do better, and have no obligation to hold ourselves back just because the evidence supports it having brought us this far.
When the fuck did “human” get added to the MRA name? Is this some half-assed re-brand attempt? Like men were never the default human. They will never understand that words mean things.
Noted, I’ll work on getting it out of my vocabulary… come to think of it, I’m not sure why it was there in the first place. Sorry about that.
No worries. A couple of years ago I started trying to remove all slurs from my language, in service to not being an asshole no matter where I went. It is surprisingly challenging.
gillyrosebee – “this isn’t sceptical” reminds me of the jab about atheism being just another religion. I don’t believe it is, but this double-down misogyny makes me want to ask them “And how do you think you’re different, O rational ones, from the religous fundamentalists who see women as lesser, as Other, as little more than breeding slaves? I don’t see you questioning that received belief.”
Makes me wonder (okay, this is assfax) if some of these Asshole Atheist guys are just in it to whine because they’re not the big boss everywhere, that churches tell ’em what to do and what not to do, and that pisses them off, as does the idea of a God that tells them the same thing. Questioning their own privilege and status as bosses of women? Not happening.
(NB this is just misogynist assholes I’m talking about, NOT atheists in general!)
@ Deoridhe
I wonder why the “we should doubt feminism as skeptics” argument never seems to extend to arguments about race. My hypothesis is that it is bullshit (my null hypothesis is that it is unfounded).
Also, you might have heard about the opening speech at Women in Secularism 2, with CFI CEO Ron Lindsay explaining that women using the word ‘privilege’ was a silencing technique against men.
I don’t think he meant to be offending (though I personally believe he should have yielded his speaking time to a woman – just once a year), but as we say in the skeptoatheistophere: “Non-hell is paved with good intentions.”
Sorry, since you mentioned atheist stuff, I just had to rant. I contemplated commenting there, but bleah.
@ athywren Good that you’re not in the same physical space as him, especially with the additional information. Not to say that all MRAs are dangerous, but it’s definitely one of those risk factors that would make me side-eye someone and plan not to be alone with them if possible. Also, this might be just me, but if I find myself feeling like I can’t share stuff that’s as fundamental as sexuality/orientation/that whole bundle with someone because I can’t trust them not to be jerks about it, I usually take that as a sign that maybe this isn’t such a good person to be around in general. So the fact that you don’t feel like you can be open with him about that stuff might have been an early warning sign.
@athywren – hi and welcome!
Would it be worth asking this MRA bloke if he thinks people should get equal pay for equal work, or is he so far gone he thinks the gender pay gap isn’t real? I’m just wondering if there are things he accepts or takes for granted (like women having the vote) that don’t fit with his “feminism is evil” arglebargle, and whether it’d be worth getting him to examine that.
Though I’m suspecting he’ll just have the usual MRA talking points to throw back … and in that case, I’d say cut contact with him pronto. That toxic set of beliefs is going to poison everything about him, and if he finds out you’re genderneutral, you could bet some of that poison would come your way.
Honestly, I think if there were more non-white skeptics speaking up about the covert (and sometimes not so covert) racism, I think the same things would come to bear. The focus has been on women, but that’s because women have hit the sort of critical tipping point, along with their male allies, so that they are having a significant effect on the culture and running of the skeptical movement. Hopefully, once feminists have won, the other -isms will be easier to incorporate, but given feminism’s not-so-great history with race and sexuality probably not.
The problem with trying a “well if it was THIS group they’d be fine” kind of argument is that often ) the types of discrimination look different but are equally discriminatory and ) often they’re in a similar marginalized position so you’re rendering their struggles and marginalization invisible and thus backstabbing your logical allies.