“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.”
takshak, the faith beliefs M Dubz referred to were things like the rampant misogyny of the so-called sceptics. It’s not so much “atheism is a faith belief” as “atheists have other faith beliefs”. The whole White Dude Superiority (or even “there’s no harassment/rape at atheist conventions!!!1eleventy!!!”) is a faith belief, and one that way too many of these guys will not examine.
Shadow – yeah, sceptic seems to have gone from “open to possibilities but wary and wanting evidence” to “nothing I don’t already believe can possibly be true, and any claim I don’t believe (like a woman saying she was raped) is so unbelievable it needs physical evidence and the testimony of four reliable dudebros before I’ll even consider it.” The Asshole Atheists invading Pharyngula, for example, have made a real stench using that word as they do.
Shadow – yeah, sceptic seems to have gone from “open to possibilities but wary and wanting evidence” to “nothing I don’t already believe can possibly be true”
QFT. I like the idea of skepticism, but I have real issues with the skeptical community. Central to idea of skepticism is that anyone can be wrong – me, you, them, anyone – and so a process for examining claims and beliefs is helpful.
When people use skepticism as a means to avoid having to examine their beliefs, something has gone very wrong.
Allow me raise me hand as someone who is a skeptic but not an atheist. I am very ““open to possibilities but wary and wanting evidence.”
I also pray every day.
I wouldn’t call the no harrassment bit a faith belief, just a wrong belief. Though I consider a faith belief to be something unfalsifiable, or at the least for us to not be able to get the evidence we need to prove it one way or the other.
For that particular belief, the evidence exists, and most likely it’s also available to them. So either they are right or they are wrong. (I’m going with wrong :))
The superiority bit… well, you can prove empirically that someone is better at something than someone else under particular circumstances, but proving that makes a person superior is impossible because superior is subjective. So yeah, I agree that is a faith belief. As is the belief that being ‘superior’ makes that person more deserving.
BUT to say that an entire group of people is superior because of a shared attribute rather than as individuals with attributes that are objectively better, isn’t faith, because it’s definitely falsifiable.
I think we need a little crowbar separation here between a faith belief and a dogmatic belief, the former relating to things that can’t be proven empirically, the latter being held regardless of what evidence there might be and whether it supports the belief or not.
“I think we need a little crowbar separation here between a faith belief and a dogmatic belief, the former relating to things that can’t be proven empirically, the latter being held regardless of what evidence there might be and whether it supports the belief or not.”
Can I get an “Amen”? 😉
Kim, I think I’m using ‘faith’ in a broader (maybe too broad) sense. Yes, the beliefs I mentioned are wrong, and definitely falsifiable, but the dudebros – just like MRAs – will not examine them, dismiss out of hand any facts that disprove their notions, and cling to the bitchez-be-lying ideas more determinedly than any creationist hung on to Archbishop Ussher’s dating. It’s a tenet of Dudebro Faith that white dudes are superior to everyone and especially to women, and woe unto them who challenge that.
That, for me, is a faith belief, and it’s one they’ll defend, not with their lives, but with threats of rape and death to anyone who challenges it.
Ninjaed – yeah, I’m prolly using “faith” too broadly in this context.
Dogmatic, definitely.
… What would a catmatic belief be?
“What would a catmatic belief be?”
Absolutely correct and good, that’s what that would be.
True! 😀
I called Louis a cat this morning (he was deigning – very catlike) and he said cats taught kings their trade. I questioned the idea of cats doing anything resembling work and he said that being superior and having to remind humans of it all the time was terrible hard work.
He’s defintely been brainwashed by the Furrinati.
Dawkins is my shepherd
I shall not question
Whether he’s being kind of a dick lately
Or whether deliberately antagonizing Muslims is really going to make them stop being Muslims.
“Dawkins is my shepherd” made me LOL. I have one of the Furrinati lounging next to me right how, and she was quite startled.
This also made me LOL.
After one burglary, the thief/thieves return the computers because it was a charity serving people who’d been sexually assaulted. This of course proves that rape culture does not exist.
Also, bonus points for not even trying to understand the Schrödinger’s Rapist concept (flawed as that might be).
On the Cluelessness Scale, I am giving this 11/10.
Drive by comment concerning the atheist/skeptic etc thing. My dad has a saying that tanslates as, “Everything that is rational is not reasonable.” (The nuances are better in French.) It’s something I think of whenever i see TrueAthiests or other types do the “I’m so rational” douchebaggery.
Thanks katz, that’s just what I was trying to say.
I quibbled because even though I am not keen on faith beliefs, I think having dogmatic beliefs is worse.
“Dawkins is my shepherd” – seconding the LOL!
I always kind of assumed that the reason some atheists were so against sexual harassment policies was that they didn’t want. women in their movement. I always wished they’d just put up a “No girls allowed” sign as it seemed simpler and more to purpose than pretending women are welcome. I’m probably wrong on the idea women are unwanted though, I imagine they do want compliant women, they probably also want to be able to dismiss women for not joining their movement.
A lot of people use it as a kind of cover for their own suspicious and negative approach to the world. I moderate a science group under another nym and the number of people who seem to believe that the only acceptable — sceptical —- way to take a scientific or any other conclusion on board is to have investigated it for themselves, by themselves and come to the same conclusions. Which is patently ridiculous. There would be no discussion of science or anything on that basis. It wouldn’t even be possible to take prescription medication unless you personally, at home, unaided, managed to get the equivalent of a minor qualification in pharmacy, immunology, allergist, along with rheumatology or endocrinology or obstetrics of whatever the relevant problem is.
Funnily enough, these people are also very reluctant to give to charity (because you can never be sure where the money goes) and completely dismiss all sociological research, but seem to have no problem with their own favoured political and economic approaches and strategies.
As for the hyperskeptics on Pharyngula, the complaints about “lack of evidence” have some similarity to the charity thing. They don’t want to accept anything unless they, personally, individually, have been given some kind of personal tour of the circumstances and they have managed to find “evidence” that satisfies their own arbitrary criteria for saying “Well, that’s OK then”. My view is that the proper skeptical approach is to acknowledge your own limits of knowledge, training and experience and then decide who and what standard of research or expertisde in the relevant field meets the requirements for acceptability.
The biggest obstacle for all of these jerks, mostly men, is that they really don’t adhere to the basic requirement of skepticism – that you will, definitely will, reconsider and change your current view if further evidence indicates that you should. It’s definitely a “faith” position that you can’t tolerate the idea of provisional acceptance.
Hah! Speaking of hyperskeptics, picked up this gem on the “Last word” post over there.
Count me in as another generally skeptical non-atheist. Man, it’s tough being both a skeptic and a witch. It’s like trying to be a pharmacist when you secretly worry that everyone in the world is actually just a hypochondriac.
Just a word on Pharyngula:
Yes, they classify any religious belief as a delusion. It is a hostile space for believers of any kind.
PZ just posted a study that purports to show that atheists are smarter than believers. He then kicked the crap out of it, pointing out that it’s built on racism and classism from top to bottom. (with a fair dose of ‘IQ tests don’t really measure intelligence, what is this junk’)
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/08/13/yall-can-stop-patting-yourselves-on-the-back-now/
They don’t always succeed in making that crucial distinction between ‘I disagree with you’ and ‘I’m just going to be an asshole towards you,’ but as somebody who comes from a heavily religious background and whose friends are mostly religious, it’s an effort I appreciate.
Language quibble: The hyperskeptics aren’t so much “on Pharyngula” as “assailing Pharyngula”. I can get people not liking PZ’s approach to the broader issues of atheism, but it’s hard to deny he’s on the right side of this fight.
Shadow:
….
A wild Blockquote Monster appears!
You use Wall of Text on the Blockquote Monster. It’s ineffective!
[blockquote]“atheists have other faith beliefs”. [/blockquote]
*some* might. I don’t know every other atheist, but I’ve seen atheist ancient aliens wanks, so it wouldn’t surprise me.
[blockquote]“I think we need a little crowbar separation here between a faith belief and a dogmatic belief,[/blockquote]
yep.. we use words like “faith” and “belief” pretty broadly in general conversation, but sometimes we need to get “technical”, because a term that’s too broadly defined is useless.
And yeah, it’s pretty much “no girls allowed in the clubhouse”, & it’s not atheism, it’s the status quo. Losing/not having one non-rational belief doesn’t make you a paragon of rationality. I’d hazard that close to 100% of Christianists** don’t believe in Zeus, but they’re still bugfuck.
** same relationship to Christians as Islamicists have to Muslims.
I hate you, blockquote monster.