“Compassion for Boys and Men.” This, the slogan of Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men, has always struck me as a teensy bit ironic, given that site founder and head angry dude Paul Elam spends much of his time berating other men, and really only seems interested in showing “compassion,” if it can be called that, for those who not only agree with everything he says but also donate money to him.
Recently Mr. Elam ran across a four-year-old video that’s been posted to the Men’s Rights subreddit numerous times in recent days. It shows a young woman assaulting a campus preacher, and knocking him off a platform, after falsely accusing him of groping her. (The woman, a student at Middle Tennessee State University, was arrested and later pled guilty to assault charges, getting a year’s probation, some community service and a fine; the preacher suffered only minor injuries.)
But the fact that a few people in the crowd cheered for the attacker apparently convinced Elam that everyone in the world except him and a few of his pals are worthless pieces of crap.
Look at the crowd cheer this violent lunatic on. It isn’t just her that is the problem. We live in a psychotic world where women can do whatever they want to men, as long as they vomit up a lie, like “get your hand off my breast.” It is a world which praises sickness, as long as the person to suffer for it is male.
Well, actually, it looked like most of the people in the crowd were a bit shocked by her assault and the preacher’s fall, and several people came forward to help him. And I’m not quite sure how Elam managed to miss the fact that the woman in question was led off by police at the end of the video.
In this culture, most every woman is Sharon Osbourne. Most every man is Hugo Schwyzer.
By describing women as a bunch of “Sharon Osbournes,” Elam is not (I don’t think) suggesting that they are savvy, articulate women who’ve been able to not only survive but flourish in male-dominated industries; no, he’s making a reference to the one time that Osbourne made a horrible castration joke on national television, and suggesting that women are a bunch of evil harpies that love to fantasize about cutting men’s dicks off.
By referring to men as “Hugo Schwyzers” — Elam’s post was written before Schwyzer’s recent Twitter meltdown — he’s not (I don’t think) suggesting that men are all a bunch of manipulative predators who glom onto feminism as a way to exploit and manipulate women, but rather suggesting that they’re a bunch of obsequious manginas who let women walk all over them.
I feel confident in attributing these interpretations to Elam’s words because he’s made these arguments many times before. It’s pretty obvious that Elam hates women. It’s only a little less obvious that he hates most men as well.
But I don’t think it’s really this video that’s got Elam angry. It looks to me like he’s still stewing over a recent op-ed by libertarian anti-feminist Cathy Young — a writer in many ways deeply sympathetic to the Men’s Rights ideology — which took a passing shot at A Voice for Men and similar sites whose “steady diet of vulgar woman-bashing … discredits any valid points they may make.”
So far Elam’s site has run at least four other posts — possibly five? I’ve lost count — responding to the single sentence mentioning AVFM in her column, including one by him and another by a “brigade” of self-described “Honey Badgers” (female MRAs), but Elam can’t resist the opportunity to point out yet again that he’s going to remain as angry as he wants to be:
I do not give a rat’s fucking ass about offending or upsetting any of them.
This world does not deserve MHRAs that are decent or measured or considerate of the mainstreams sensibilities. This world deserves a jerk on the collar and a slap across the face and the flying spittle of rage that it earns with each man and boy that it denigrates and abuses.
“The Flying Spittle of Rage” makes a much better — and more accurate — slogan for AVFM than that boring old “Compassion for Boys and Men.”
Is Dawkins even a biologist anymore, or did he quit that career in order to be a full-time Douchebag For Atheism?
It’s a pity, because his evolution books are so good. The Ancestor’s Tale literally brought tears to my eyes, because it was so inspiring to me (as a pagan, nyah nyah!) to think that if you go back far enough, every living thing on the planet is part of the same clan. I already knew it, of course, but to have it spelled out like that, step by step, each step including an elucidation of something we have in common with those rodents or worms or cauliflower plants…it was breathtakingly wonderful.
I miss that Dawkins.
@Karalora: It’s tough to let Dawkins’ words about biology stand on their own merits when they were espoused by a walking superiority complex.
Check it out guys! I used the welcome package to make my very own kitty avatar!! I am part of the collective now.
@entropistanon:
Hiiiiiivemiiiiiind!
Oh, and welcome! Love your kitty!
@freemage- I’m slightly confused; maybe you can enlighten me. You said that you are a “political atheist” who believes in separation of church and state whilst having faith. Does that describe how you are now, or have you since given up believing in God? Either way it doesn’t matter, just the statement was a little unclear.
I would describe myself as someone who heartily embraces secularism in the public sphere whilst being deeply religious. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I’m Jewish and not Christian and I understand that “religion in the public sphere” usually means Christianity.
@Karalora- that kind of makes me want to read that book. *sigh* Dawkins, why must you be such a jerk?
M Dubz: Back when I was still a believer (Episcopalian, to be precise), I used the term “political atheist” to describe my views on things–I was part of the faithful, and believed that my faith was best served by a really high wall, topped with barbed wire and patrolled by rabid Robo-Rottweilers, with anti-aircraft guns mounted at set points, set between Church and State.
As an atheist, I think this is one of the things I got right when I was a believer. (My growth to Social Justice Ally has been… rocky, at best, and took far too long in retrospect. My desire to punch 20-year-old me in the mouth, repeatedly, grows only stronger over time.)
RE: leftwingfox
Sometimes a skeptic will simply claim that their beliefs are true because they use the tools of science and logic. Any actual or correct use of science and logic to the problem at hand is completely incidental to this claim.
OMFG I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE DO THAT. I’ve had so many fucking fights about multiplicity because of that. It really gets my goat. Because of course, THEIR existence is self-evident, but mine isn’t, so only MY existence is worthy of skepticism and AAAAARGH.
RE: Freemage
It’s okay. Me and hubby were reading our accounts of when we got together six years ago, and I just wanted to hide my head in my hands. I wanted to be Butchy McMachoMan SO BAD, and it shows. It really shows. I think everyone wants to give their younger selves a shaking now and then.
@Ax
Wow, just wow. If a anti-male radfem wrote something equivalent to that, those folks would be furious.
Oh, also, if anybody sees Cloudiah, or she shows up in the thread… my health got better! I have now posted La Curandera! Thanks for the sponsorship! 😀
Oh, and in other kickass news guys, a fan of mine made a Facebook fanpage for my writing! It’s still under construction, but I feel so lucky to have such nice fans. (And now I feel vaguely guilty for not wanting to be on FB.)
@freemage- Thanks for the explanation! And yay for social justice allies from different belief systems!
@LBT- Isn’t the whole point of science and logic to apply them scientifically and logically? I fully admit and realize that my faith is not built on the precepts of scientific proof, and don’t try to use the tools of faith to prove science. It’d be nice if they also didn’t try to mask their shitty faith beliefs as “logical” and “proof based.” (and yes, they are still faith beliefs even if there’s no God involved).
I’m here, I’ve just been hip-deep in our map collection, which tends to put me off line for big chunks of the day. I’ve bookmarked La Curandera to read later!
And glad to see entripistanon got a welcome package — I’ve been remiss in handing them out, partly because I don’t always realize someone is new. (I’m terrible at remembering names!) If I’m AWOL, and anyone notices someone new who needs one, anyone can click on the Artistry for Feminism and Kittens link over on the sidebar to the right, and it’s one of the top-level pages.
As the video someone linked (cloudiah) pointed out, lots of “skeptics” adopt logical positivism when they see something they don’t want to believe. This confuses them (and lots of others) as well as making it hard to actually argue with them, since it’s a cul-de-sac; meant to bottle up the people who are disagreeing with them.
RE: cloudiah
Oh good. One of the tricky bits about having readers on MBZ is that I’m always worried I won’t be on when they are, and they’ll miss one of their prompts getting posted.
RE: M Dubz
(and yes, they are still faith beliefs even if there’s no God involved).
Of course there is. Most people accept on faith that they exist. I tried to pretend I was above faith beliefs, until I found myself in the horrific position of trying to EMPIRICALLY PROVE I didn’t exist. (Because I wasn’t one of THOSE irrational fluff bunnies who just accepted I existed because it made things happier! I needed REAL reasons!)
Let me tell you, if you want someone to lose their mind in record time, introduce to them the idea that they don’t exist, they just think they do.
RE: pecunium
Yyyyup. I’ve had folks come to MY webpage and insist I prove my existence to them, only to get all aghast when I go, “Okay, you prove your existence to me.” Because obviously I have the burden of proof, and I’m just trying to derail or something. Even they’re the ones storming into my space acting like Emperor of Rationality and insisting I stop everything and answer all their stupid questions that presume, at best, that I’m a delusion.
Sometimes, I just have to wonder, if they don’t believe I exist, WHO DO THEY THINK THEY’RE TALKING TO?
LBT: Heh. That just sounds like a folly of youth thing, to me. My beliefs–and my willingness to express them to others–were, in some cases, pretty damn toxic. (Single worst case I can recall was laughing at and spreading a one-liner rape joke. Beyond that, there was a blend of the usual misogynistic assumptions feeding into beliefs on feminism, and some moderate homophobia and race-privilege.)
Come to think of it, the race-privilege was probably the ‘best’ area of my younger self, after church/state separation. Sure, I tended not to ‘get it’ a lot of the time, but I at least understood that there were other views, held by people who were more directly impacted by things, and that I had to at least try to listen when they were willing to express their views to me. Helped growing up in a racially diverse neighborhood, attending a mostly PoC high school, and attending one of the few racially integrated churches in the area, actually.
Block-by-block ‘integration’ of the Chicago suburbs meant that churches tended to either close or ‘flip’, going from almost all-white to almost all-black, in very short order. Our church had such a strong appeal to its congregation, though, that even those who moved further away still made the effort to drive into the heart of a heavily African-American suburb to attend Mass. At the same time, we also had such a strong open-door policy that we had a fair attendance from the area’s new arrivals, as well. We also placed a strong emphasis on community support–our food pantry started from a small thing to a fairly major operation, passing out a hundred or so grocery bags full of staples every week–and THAT demonstrated good will to the community, too.
I think I’ve commented before, here, that my homophobia beat up my transphobia at an early age, so I was, unusually, far more accepting of the idea of trans* people than gay people. Not exactly a proud moment, but it probably helped later on to have firmly latched onto the idea that someone’s identity is theirs to determine.
OMG I’m loving the comments about Dawkins here.
“Is Dawkins even a biologist anymore, or did he quit that career in order to be a full-time Douchebag For Atheism?”
“@Karalora: It’s tough to let Dawkins’ words about biology stand on their own merits when they were espoused by a walking superiority complex. ”
Love your new kitty, entropistanon!
@leftwingfox – that whole scepticism thing went to nauseating levels on the grenade thread on Pharyngula. Did you read it? There was even one piece of filth dismissing a rape claim on the grounds that “millions of women claim to have experienced God – do we believe them?” Didn’t matter how often it was pointed out to that one and all the other rape apologists that rape is anything but extraordinary and does not require extraordinary evidence, or that victim testimony IS evidence anyway, they were all “Oh, you people are not True Sceptics, you’re just believing these women!”
What.
This is the reddit thread on /r/atheism about the Pharyngula incident:
http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1k0ooh/pharyngula_an_even_more_prominent_member_of_the/
Sample comment:
I used to respect PZ Meyers, but I am getting sick of the bullshit he is putting out. It is as if he wants to tear the atheist community apart.
Paging Monsieur Descartes, paging Monsieur Descartes …
Bad enough when douchebags do that about Louis; I can’t imagine having to deal with it for my own existence. I went through the whole “But what PROOF is there?” schtick too, and I know the evidence I have – other people seeing and hearing and feeling him, strangers included – would get the hand-waving treatment from Teh True Scientifical Skeptics, but now it’s … well, who gives a shit what they think? If someone’s so keen on tearing down another person’s world, when that person is not doing harm to others, it suggests to me that their own inner life needs looking at.
And harking back to what M Dubz said upthread – not everything is a matter for science anyway. It isn’t the be-all and end-all of human thinking, far from it, and saying it is sounds like scientism (not to mention a dessicated worldview).
In other breaking news, I finished the second sleeve of the tunic and now have just to knit the collar and sew it all up! Five weeks’ work nearly done, yay!
Ack, I moved from old maps to old photos, and found one from 1983 that led me down a rabbit hole until I finally found the newspaper story it was taken for. It was a story what life was like for trans* women prisoners who were being housed in the men’s prison at Vacaville. The worst part is that you can tell the reporter is trying to be sympathetic, but the story just reeks of condescension and transphobia — and the personal stories he relates are absolutely heartbreaking. But those women were very brave, braver than they should have had to be.
“Women are facing a very real and grave problem in our culture: They are obnoxious c*nts.”
I’ll wear that label with pride, AVfM. Now go fuck yourselves. <3
Underneath the gurgling mass that is my general narcissism, I find that no particular problem.
But then, at the best of times, I am also not entirely sure I exist.
Also, I’ve read my E. Howard and done my time trying to repress it all, but this one bit always comes back:
So now when people pose me tricky philosophical questions, I do like Conan, and whack ’em with my longsword.
(It’s only latex based, so they’re fine)
One of the things that has seemed to be on the rise with a lot of internet atheists I’ve been encountering lately (both asshole and non), and has been driving me up the wall, is using “skeptic” as interchangeable with “atheist”. While it does seem to be the case that the skeptic movement/community is almost completely comprised of atheists (or maybe all skeptics are atheist? Feel free to correct me cos I don’t have much knowledge of it), this obviously doesn’t translate to all atheists being skeptics.
Also, @entropistanon, welcome!! And consider this your formal invitation to my No Assholes Allowed treehouse in Neverland, for a day of Darkwing Duck reruns and chocolate milk 😛
“(and yes, they are still faith beliefs even if there’s no God involved).”
You’re playing a little bait-and-switch game with the multiple meanings of the word “faith”. Sneaky… & It implies that “atheism” is a “faith-belief”, which is untrue.
“Let me tell you, if you want someone to lose their mind in record time, introduce to them the idea that they don’t exist, they just think they do..”
ahhh, solipsism. so…fucking… annoying. Anyone brings that up seriously I feel safe in ignoring them.
Science is the best tool we have for understanding the world. That doesn’t mean it answers all questions and it doesn’t mean that True Skeptics(tm) are very good at either science, logic or understanding.
I passed through that self-righteous atheist bit myself.
I think it was encountering the Libertarians and Randroids in the movement that convinced me that loudly praising the virtues of logic and reason do not necessarily make your arguments logical or reasonable. Or even lucid, for that matter.