“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.”
Argenti: (dear gods pecunium, can you imagine how that fight would go? I have no desire to discover which of us is more stubborn!)
It would be epic; if we had grounds for personal disagreement, as opposed to philosophical differences about the nature of the ineffable.
Nope, it is. Being able to draw a Meatball-style relationship between your topic and the original topic doesn’t change the fact that, if people are talking about one person/group doing one thing and you say “but this OTHER group does this OTHER thing,” then it’s a red herring because the whole effect is to get people to stop talking about the original topic and focus on the new one.
(Anyone else remember the game Meatball? Works best among small children.)
Freemage, I appreciate how courteous you’re being and I hope I’m not stepping on your toes too badly, either, because that’s not my goal.
Pecunium, masterful use of “waving the bloody shirt.”
pecuniam, you are completely misrepresenting/mischaracterizing what I said, and ignoring the part where I apologized. That’s fine, I can’t change your mind once it’s made up. Only you can. I’ll disengage now.
RE: cloudiah
It was a story what life was like for trans* women prisoners who were being housed in the men’s prison at Vacaville.
D: I can only imagine.
RE: Fibinachi
Underneath the gurgling mass that is my general narcissism, I find that no particular problem.
Yeah, in my case, I felt that not only did I not exist, but if I did, I was pathological. It was a bad double-bind. (We multiples are really, REALLY encouraged not to see ourselves as people, but just dissociated delusional states of ego.)
RE: Argenti
DON’T YOU DARE MENTION THE OCTOPUS AGAIN. (Though I have actually used ‘nopetopus’ as a verb in my house, much to the amusement of my roommate.) Also, when you see Sneak, ask zer for zer jellyfish imitation.
RE: inurashii
*pokes head in door* Hey everybody did you hear? The ‘figurative emphasis’ definition of the word ‘literally is in dictionaries now!
Oh no! That’s one of my conversational pet peeves! D:
And no, I’m not touching yet ANOTHER a/theism thread. Nope nope nope *squirts inks and nopetopuses away*
takshak: takshak: I am not ignoring the apology. I can’t help that you think I mischaracterised what you said. I can say that I don’t see any qualifiers in what you said; when you said it. You made an accusation, which was contextually local, about theists saying non-theists go to hell. You made it to the theists here.
I don’t think you were all that careful to not 1) imply that all believers are “like that” and 2) discuss religion *at all* . I do not know why you think I did.
I thought that you did because you directed a blanket statement to this commentariat.
To show how I got here, I’ll do a play by play:
“(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.
That’s a direct impugning: and it assumes a bad faith argument on the part of the person (M Dubz).
This was clarified 13 minutes later by Kittehs:
katz then inserted the Crowbar of Distinction (related to The Mallet of Loving Correction) a couple of hours after that, to which all agreed as a useful way to avoid such confusions in future:
Several hours of conversation transpired (in which you took part) as these themes were explored; and no one was attacking you; nor saying Atheists are going to Hell.
Then Katz, in a thank you to Howard for caring about the distinction between, You believe I don’t, and, “you are a delusional idiot”, you whipped out the quotation you think I misrepresent.
I chose not to read your comment about “fundies” hurting you when they don’t know it as an accusation. Contextually it could be read that way.
Freemage, as an atheist, tried to tell you why that wasn’t a good line of argument here.
To which you said:
That’s not much of an apology. In point of fact, it’s not really an apology at all; not for the attack you made. It’s an apology for the comment you made to M Dubz, about pulling a bait and switch with “faith”.
The later things you said, weren’t about the use of faith, and how it was meant. They were about how theists act.
Which is what I held off on replying to, because it’s a fucking touchy subject, and pile-ons make it worse. You may recall I didn’t respond to any of this until people were called bullies, for defending themselves against an attack on their character. And I said it wasn’t as aimed at you as it might appear; because things had happened to temper my sentiments.
I’m going to assume I wasn’t as clear as I should have been, an so you didn’t notice it.
But that’s what I saw, and why I said what I said, and why I believe what I believe. My conclusions aren’t absolute, but it’s not on me to change them, just because you don’t like the way I’ve read the evidence.
YAY! The Blockquote Monster was appeased.
I think some people who characterize themselves as skeptics (the hyperskeptics) get ‘skeptical’ confused with ‘cynical’.
I also suspect that some atheists can get a little, um, dogmatic, is because they were raised with religion and feel they were lied to. I know I felt that way as a teenager, especially since the catholic church had been such a huge part of my life (though I never really believed… just my family were very involved in the church and school and so on). Some atheists may actually become anti-theists.
And some people are just smug assholes. Literally! ::pokes LBT, runs away giggling::
RE: Tracy
You are such a jerk.
Enh, I’m an atheist, but probably not a skeptic. After all, I’m an atheist for emotional reasons, and were circumstances less against me, I probably would be a monk somewhere. As is, I have to satisfy myself with being a follower of the great Ed Wood.
And no, the Blockquote Monster actually refused one of my offerings. The sentence after the first bolding is by takshak. I apologise for any confusion.
Freemage:
I see you now and then in the comments section of blogs I lurk at (Pharyngula, etc). You’re always nice and definitely do not fall into the asshole-atheist category. Not that that needed saying – I just wanted to tell you that!
LBT:
::giggle-cries::
And all shall praise his holy name while dancing around the Golden Turkey.
katz: It’s all good. I recognize the distinction between “insulting all atheists”; “getting digs in at a sub-group of atheists”; and “trying to correct a particular atheist who is clogging up the forum with some stuff that’s not appropriate to the venue”.
There are times and places where I will be, to use Tracy’s term, an “anti-theist”. I am not disturbed by that description at all; it’s arguably a good description of one of the precepts I’d use if given magical world-rebuilding powers (so yes, my first action upon being given godly powers would be the banishment of religion).
What I recognize, however, is that THIS is not a place for me to make that argument. This is a place for me to complain about misogynistic elements of society (regardless of their religious status), and to both offer and receive succor and solace from others dealing with the same shit (again, without concern for the religious beliefs of my fellow-travelers).
RE: Tracy
It’s true! Also, it gives me a great responses for if well-meaning assholes tell me that the hardships I have experienced are because “God has a plan for me.” I can just fix them with a thousand-yard stare and whisper, “Ed Wood has a plan for me.”
Then I can wrap my lower face in a cloak and Lugosi away.
Tracy: Good to hear. Confession time, though–I’m human and do slip up, like everyone else. My main advantage is that I’m usually pretty good about letting myself get called on it.
Well this is starting to get recursive:
The whole problem being that, if you start out by saying that everyone who disagrees with you starts out by saying that everyone who disagrees with them starts out by saying that everyone who disagrees with them [etc], there’s pretty much no non-asshole way to go from there.
I also tend to noptopus my way right the fuck out of a thread whenever the atheism/theism subject comes up, so I may have missed some of the legacy discussions. However, I have seen folks on manboobz say that theists are delusional/stupid(i think “crazy” has been used as well), on the other hand, I haven’t seen anyone on manboobz claim that non-believers(atheist or otherwise) are immoral/going to hell.
FWIW, I do feel that if someone did come in here with the “believe in (my) god or you’re going to hell” approach, the theist regulars would react just as viscerally as they do to the “theists are delusional” meme.
Too bloody true.
FWIW, I do feel that if someone did come in here with the “believe in (my) god or you’re going to hell” approach, the theist regulars would react just as viscerally as they do to the “theists are delusional” meme.
At least.
It’s been awhile since we had someone being an asshat with their religion: NWO is the only one who comes to mind who wasn’t a driveby.
LBT:
I am going to do that the next time the LDS or JW’s come to my door and don’t take my polite ‘no, thank you’ for an answer. Except I will then throw some glitter, flutter my hands as if they are wings, and Disney away.
freemage:
Oh, me too. I can get very smug and condescending. Busband is in charge of sounding the ‘Tracy’s tone’ alarm.
I have a friend who is christian (not sure which denomination) who also has a mouth even fouler than my own. We had a great time at her birthday party having fake and pretty dirty religious debates in front of her very conservative religious family – her idea, and she was delighted (and really, really drunk). We often rag on each other for being a godbot/hellbound heathen in good fun. But a mutual friend of ours once got into a serious debate with her out of nowhere, challenging her belief system and being pissy about it. Really pissed her off. In her words, ‘challenge my beliefs and ideas, but don’t attack them, or me because I have them.’
I dunno… sometimes people just want to be right more than they want to understand someone else. I try not to do the former. I don’t always succeed.
Sums up most of our trolls, right there.
“It would be epic; if we had grounds for personal disagreement, as opposed to philosophical differences about the nature of the ineffable.”
Mangos 😛
Hmm, it’d also require neither, or at least not both, of us to subscribe to “in matters of taste…”
It would indeed be epic, but I cannot think of a topic on which it could occur. Maybe whether you’re allowed to get yourself arrested for your response to my father, but even that would be the arrested part, not the rest.
*ponders for a moment* refrain from agreeing with my psych. That wouldn’t get epic, that would just fucking hurt.
Other than that, I got nothing. Which is good, because we could manage Cataline Orations level lengthy and convoluted (might be fun, devils advocate sometime?)
Anyways!
“DON’T YOU DARE MENTION THE OCTOPUS AGAIN. (Though I have actually used ‘nopetopus’ as a verb in my house, much to the amusement of my roommate.) Also, when you see Sneak, ask zer for zer jellyfish imitation.”
OCTOPUS!!!
Speaking of seeing Sneak, pecunium, you see the question about us invading your place for the keyboard repair? LBT suggestion October 1~2 which works for me I think. Should probably work out some details on this, since I wouldn’t mind just crashing there. You two want me to cc you both on email about that?
“The Mallet of Loving Correction”
Not going to say anything. Not going to say anything. So many entirely inappropriate comment. Not saying anything…
Pecunium you can ignore most of that novella I just deposited in your inbox, this covers it — “sometimes people just want to be right more than they want to understand someone else.”
For those following along without being privy to our email, I am Not Religious in any traditional sense. We discuss such matters without, well, the sort of epicness that would result from us actually fighting, how? That, right there.
And, from the non-religious corner, I’m equally sure that anyone pulling that “atheists are monsters” shit would be told where to shove it as I am that “believe in my religion or go to hell” would get told the same.
“The Mallet of Loving Correction” is the name Scalzi uses for the Banhammer. At Chicon VII he was given a real one (gavel the size of a jackhammer).
Well now that’s just no fun at all!
Ok it probably is. But not in the sense I was…am…not saying.
Well, naturally. I think it doesn’t come up much because the overlap between those sorts of people and people with repugnant gender views is so large and of course we end up focusing on the gender aspect.