NOTE: See the end of the piece for an important clarification from the University.
So it seems the new “Male Studies” initiative at the University of South Australia is running into a few problems. Well, one big problem: members of the general public have discovered that some of the people involved with the initiative are raving misogynists, or have chosen to associate themselves with raving misogynists.
Yesterday, a story by journalist Tory Shepherd noted that two of the lecturers have written for a notoriously misogynistic website by the name of A Voice for Men. (You may have heard of it.) One of them, the crankish American attorney Roy Den Hollander, even suggested in a post on that site that men’s rights activists may have to take up arms against the evil Feminists who run the world.
The future prospect of the Men’s Movement raising enough money to exercise some influence in America is unlikely. But there is one remaining source of power in which men still have a near monopoly—firearms.
Huh. That doesn’t sound like a very academic analysis of the situtation to me.
Den Hollander also likes to refer to “women’s studies” as “witches’ studies.” And if you don’t believe her, here’s the AVFM post in which he does just that; it’s in the first sentence.
Apparently pointing out some of these basic facts about Den Hollander, and about another of the lecturers, Miles Groth, who has also written for AVFM, is causing some trouble for Dr. Misan and his little Male Studies initiative — at least according to a post on AVFM by the always furious Paul Elam, who informs us somberly that
[s]ources close to the story report that [Shepherd’s article] is likely a terminal setback for the new initiative.
Elam fights back against Shepherd’s alleged “lies” in a paragraph that is itself nothing but lies:
The article by Shepherd is saturated with the typical lies, e.g.: that the SPLC named AVFM as a hate group, which they did not, and that this website regularly calls women “bitches and whores,” which it does not. She also implied a connection between AVFM and those championing the initiative which does not exist.
Actually, Shepherd said that the SPLC described AVFM as a “hate site,” not a “hate group.” This is in fact true, as the SPLC included AVFM in a list of “woman-hating sites,” which would make it a hate site, as the hatred of women is in fact a kind of hate.
And AVFM does in fact refer to women regularly as whores and bitches and other slurs. Indeed, in one notorious post about Rebecca Watson, Elam managed to use the word “whore” more than 30 times; as for the word “bitch,” well, check out this compilation of AVFM posts featuring that word in the title. As you’ll see from that post, Elam also likes referring to women as “cunts,” and once referred to the feminist blogosphere as the “cunt-o-sphere.”
Do your own searches for “whore” or “bitch” on AVFM to find more recent examples.
Shepherd doesn’t, in fact, imply any “connection” between AVFM and “those championing the initiative” beyond the undeniable fact that two of the lecturers have written for AVFM, and that AVFM has heralded the Male Studies initiative. Interestingly, it’s Elam, with his talk about “[s]ources close to the story,” who implies an even closer connection than Shepherd does.
The rest of Elam’s post is a remarkable mixture of self-contradicting lies and self-delusion. First, he declares “Male Studies” to be a pure-as-the-driven snow example of non-ideological scholarship.
In writing this article Shepherd actually served as a mouthpiece for academic feminists invested in blocking the attempt to study human males in a non-ideological, scholarly fashion.
How exactly is someone who describes himself explicitly as antifeminist, who describes women’s studies as “witches studies,” and who’s written for AVFM on several occasions an example of someone who is trying “to study human males in a non-ideological, scholarly fashion?”
Elam then launches into one of his typical chest-beating fuck-their-shit-up ideological rants:
The Men’s Human Rights Movement is not going to go away. Indeed, even as we regret the temporary setback of an important and valuable initiative, we do welcome another opportunity to shine a light on the ideologically twisted agenda of people who would undermine an academic program with the ambition to enhance our understanding of an egregiously underserved population.
Yes, that’s right. The world’s men have been “egregiously underserved.”
This type of bullying and public deception is precisely what has catapulted the Men’s Human Rights Movement into rapid growth and increasing popularity in such a short period of time.
The only bullying and deception I’m seeing here is coming from your side, dude. Women aren’t talking about taking up arms against men. You’re the one who’s lying about what Shepherd said.
From assaultive, criminal demonstrators in Toronto blocking doors to a lecture on male suicide, to this – an obviously orchestrated attack on honorable academicians — the reality of what feminism has become, and the depths to which it has lowered, is again in full public view.
Uh, Roy Den Hollander isn’t an “honorable academician.” And, frankly, neither is anyone who chooses to associate themselves with your site. I’m not sure how Shepherd’s one article counts as an “obviously orchestrated attack,” but all she did was point out what Hollander said, and point out the sort of misogynistic shit you publish on your shitty website.
In other words, Mr. Elam, you guys have dug your own hole here — with you, personally, bringing one of the bigger shovels.
Just think: A Voice for Men may be in large part responsible for the collapse of this Male Studies initiative, because you and the others writing on your site can’t hide your raging misogyny, and can’t resist the temptation to call women “bitches” and “whores.”
This is the lesson of all the publicity you guys have gotten in the last year: when members of the general public learn what you guys actually believe, they are repulsed by it. The more attention you get, the more people oppose you.
After some more ranting that he might as well have cut and pasted from any of a dozen previous posts of his, Elam ends with one of his trademark vague threats:
We will force their hand, again and again. And each time they demonstrate their moral bankruptcy; their limitless capacity for tyranny, the more they will generate the contempt and indignation they deserve. And the more people will realize that the only way forward is straight through them.
You’re just digging that hole deeper.
EDITED TO ADD: The Universityof Southern Australia has clarified a few things about the Male Studies initiatives. According to a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, the school only approved one of the four proposed courses, and officially rejected (back in 2012) the one that would have included Den Hollander and Groth as lecturers. Here’s what the newspaper says:
The university has approved one of four proposed graduate courses, a certificate in male health and health promotion, which will begin online next month.
But an original proposal by one of the university’s academics outlined three further certificates, including a course called ”males and sexism”, which named lecturers who have been published on radical men’s rights websites. …
The university emphasised it did not endorse views of the suggested lecturers. It said the courses, which were criticised in the media on Monday, were rejected in 2012.
So that’s reassuring to hear.
I removed a portion of my post referring to Gary Misan, in charge of the course, because in light of this information it’s not clear if he was referring to all four courses, including those involving Den Hollander and Groth, or just to the male health course.
Oddly, though, Dr. Misan seems to think that the University has signed up for more than one course. On his official University of South Australia web site he describes himself as “program co-ordinator for a new suite of courses in Male Studies at UniSA, the first of which will be offered in 2014.”
I’m pretty sure that, unpleasant as they are, the attitudes expressed by MRAs have been the bog standard for most of history. They are just the ‘normal’ horrible bits of human nature taken to an extreme and exposed for all to see in a way that is made easy by the internet.
Everyone, neurotypical or not, has those kinds of thoughts sometimes.
1 – mental illness and violence?
http://depts.washington.edu/mhreport/facts_violence.php
2 – “date rape prevention prevents boys from going to college”
It’s cute how they continue to pretend that ‘date rape’ means ‘criminalizing sex’ and ‘demonizing men.’
No, we didn’t study that one…but how about that. Even royalty doodles in the margins of its books!
We did learn “On Monsieur’s Departure”. She wrote that after dismissing a French nobleman who was wooing her. MISANDRY!!!
Also, the prof who taught first-year English Lit, where I learned that, was a woman. MISANDRY!!!
(The fact that she taught mostly male authors will hereby go unmentioned. MISANDRY!!!)
Are you serious? The antifeminists don’t lack legitimacy for “disagreeing with feminism”, they lack legitimacy for disagreeing with reality and trying to scrap laws against violence and discrimination. That’s what’s really disturbing here. They won’t be content until the world is run on their plan. Giving them a place on campus to propound their toxic nonsense would be like giving the KKK a White Studies chair, or creationists the right to teach astrophysics based on the bible, or climate-change denialists a place alongside legitimate climatologists. One does not legitimize gobbledygook by putting it on an equal footing with reality and then telling impressionable youngsters that any viewpoint, however cock-eyed, is acceptable as long as you can write an essay skillfully propounding it. Any university that did such a thing would rightly be regarded as a joke parading around in academic robes. And it would deserve to lose not only wealthy donors, but its accreditation as well.
I know that sounds like heresy in a land where hate speech is deemed “free” and there is a Bob Jones University (unaccredited!) run by rapturist fundies, but the world doesn’t work on the basis of “just throw any old shit up against a wall and see what sticks”. Maybe the US has devolved to that level, and maybe some there think that way of juxtaposing different ideas is good, but other countries still have standards.
Being serious about things that nobody should be serious about is like Roscoe’s only setting.
^THIS!
I’ve looked through the archives. It’s not that the incidence of people using the term “crazy” or other no-nos has increased; it’s that we used to move on to more interesting topics rather than spend the rest of the thread piling on the “ableist”. Confirmation bias, I guess. We sure as hell spend a lot more time bickering about bad words, so they stick in one’s mind as being used more often.
This is in the comments section from a link Emma provided on a video /article Edmonton men speaking against men’s rights groups. Its in response to one man saying he doesn’t need men’s rights as long as he has his human rights .
I know there is a lot of nasty stuff said and believed about women .But over and over I see comments like this . The fact these guys believe they don’t have these rights is at the heart of their rage . Elam called the Edmonton video full of lies . What about the above lie/s ?And this comment .
WHERE are all these “notable” women saying otherwise ? And what about what really counts the LAWS on the books ? And what your average woman believes ?The majority ?
When did men LOSE their right to a trial by jury ? Innocent until proven guilty ?I think for them that means they shouldn’t EVER even be a suspect let alone put on trial.
Right to be a father to your children ? Where are all these men having their legal parental rights removed ?And being divorced and having to share custody or the woman getting primary custody is not “removal of the right to BE a father to your children .” So please don’t say that again .
Your “right to reproductive choices.” That one BOGGLES my mind ..What FUCKING choices are you being DENIED ? OH I forgot you can’t FORCE a woman to have an abortion or FORCE her to carry a child in her body to term and go through childbirth ? Why not ? BECAUSE ITS NOT YOUR RIGHT and will never be because its not YOUR BODY. What other “rights” to “reproductive ” choices are you being denied dude ?
It NEVER fails to amaze me they think “not having sex” is such a LUDICROUS suggestion as to choices(or hey how about using fucking BC yes it can fail but if done right you have low odds of having to deal with unintended pregnancy) but yet the alternatives ? Its ludicrous to point out its your RIGHT and a choice to not have sex . When the alternatives after the fact could only be your choices if you were placed in AUTHORITY over the woman’s body .Which IS ludicrous .Sorry that will never happen and its not a violation of YOUR reproductive rights or “choices” to NOT be given authority over another adults BODY. In this case a woman just because you orgasim’d in her once.
Sorry for the rant but talk about LIES . Every man I know has the RIGHT to a trial by jury show me otherwise until then this is a LIE. Every man I know has the RIGHT to BE a father to his children UNLESS those rights have been terminated for the protection of the child OR he gives them up .So that is a lie . I do not see women by and large claiming that women should NOT be held equal before the law as men .Where I live women if the crime fits are EXECUTED by lethal injection .And trust me they are not convicted by all male juries.Your reproductive choices are limited compared to women by the BIOLOGY /NATURE of male and female reproductive roles .You know that going in .DEAL with it.Until they figure out how to nurture a fetus to term outside the womb it will be that way .So STOP pretending there are any REASONABLE choices you are being denied the right to .
BLAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SredniVashtar:
See: Stopped clocks, and the accuracy thereof.
It’s not just whether or not their position in isolation is correct; it’s about how they came to it.
MRAs oppose “Ladies’ Night” promotions because they view any perceived favor towards women as a sign of misandry.
Feminists tend to deride those same events for two reasons:
1: Even the relatively innocuous “No Cover Charge” variety feeds into the broader patriarchal narrative of women as the gatekeepers of sex. The overall approach would treat women as gazelles, men as lions, and the club as a watering hole–ie, ‘good hunting grounds’. Yeah, it’s pretty messed up.
2: Worse still, the “Half-price Drinks” variety of Ladies’ Night is very much about encouraging overconsumption of alcohol by women present, specifically to make them more pliable for predators. (Note: Women aren’t any more vulnerable to this sort of manipulation than men. I can distinctly remember dropping a dollar on Nickel Beer Night. But again, it’s about the context, and the clubs and bars that offer drinks at reduced prices are deliberately playing into a context of predation and objectification.)
STANDING OVATION!!!!!!!
I agree with this analysis. The guy is saying its sexist against men. O.K so then why do men flock to ladies night ? Ladies night is CROWDED and its not because there are barely any men there . Places that promote ladies night “earn” the title “meat market” for a reason.
Snort. Last time I looked, trial by jury, innocent-until-proven-otherwise, etc., all still existed fully untouched. Last time I looked was just today. This argument is cabbage.
Whaaaaaaaaaat?
I’m surprised this dude can still sit down. Isn’t his ass sore from pulling all that crap out of it?
Dude? We are. You’re not. You have zero credibility, and I don’t have to respect you. Your viewpoint is dingleberries.
Did anyone else notice that he suggests armed overthrow of the govt right in the Colbert segment? At about the 5:55 mark, he says, “Let’s get 100,000 armed guys in D.C. I’m willing to go down with you guys; let’s go.”
@Nepenthe, we disagree on the issue of if/to what extent that language (and more importantly, to my mind, the opinions that it represents) are harmful. Certainly in the ~2 1/2 years I’ve been hanging out here, I have always expressed my discomfort with referring to MRAs as “crazy” etc., and I wasn’t alone in that. But perhaps you are talking about farther back than that?
In any case, I don’t think we are ever likely to come to an agreement as to whether “ableism” is a real concern.
Those comments I posted are though a regular part of there mantra . And I just stare at it .What the hell are you talking about ?
Um….turn on court T.V dude. I think if you wait long enough you will see a trial with a man as the defendant and 12 jurors sitting there .Better yet read yahoo news. I followed the Trayvon /Martin trial myself . Yep I even heard the 9-1-1 tapes . Dude had a jury trial .And by the way was aquitted .
The whole men are innocent until proven guilty ? Uh no .Sure you may have society out there who are aware of certain cases who are making their judgments.(SAME with female accused like Kaycee Anthony…I don’t know many who do not think she is guilty as hell ) But the actual jury is ORDERED BY LAW to consider you not guilty until the state (or fed government ) proves otherwise BEYOND a reasonable doubt. The fact you can be charged and have to DEFEND your self against whatever evidence they have to charge you is …the way the SYSTEM works idiot. For men AND women .
Whatever I’m just saying just because I can SAY ” Women don’t have the right to be a mother to her children .” Does not make it TRUE! Just because I KNOW some women that the father sued for primary custody and WON>
These guys if you didn’t know any better you would think they lived in another COUNTRY!They sound SO convinced its clearly paranoid delusions. I say that because I think they honestly believe it .
Don’t know why I put ableism in quotation marks since I think it is a real thing >.>
Speaking of reproductive choices .Hey guys you want another choice ? Here go do this except walk around for 40 weeks first with an eventual extra 15 lbs stuffed in your gut (baby water uterus) ..but before that have what can be compared to as the vomit virus for 12/14 weeks weeks. Swell up like a balloon have chronic lower back pain fatigue .(these are all possible side affects of pregnancy ) shortness of breath etc… then have to take off of work for 8 weeks after going through this (linked video men in labor) for 12 hours (not one hour)and don’t forget the bleeding afterwards the ripped genitalia (or sliced open abdomen).
Here go for it .(must watch /hilarious )
Nailed it.
A friend of mine just shared this with me on FB .I think its befitting .
” A man who lies to himself ,and believes his own lies ,becomes unable to recognize truth ,either in himself or anyone else ,and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others.
When he has no respect for others he can no longer love ,and in him ,he yields to his impulses,indulges in the lowest form of pleasure ,and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices.And it all comes from lying -to others and to yourself.
Fyodor Dostoevsk
emma, would you say lots of racists have actual mental problems? Or homophobes? Or bigots of any stripe?
Seriously, we live in misogynistic cultures (are there any left in the world that aren’t?) and MRAs, feMRAs and so on are just extreme examples of it. Being a shitstain is common enough and has fuckall to do with actual mental illness or brain pathologies or anything else.
Not just any French nobleman, but the King’s brother; “Monsieur” was how the eldest brother of the King was known. She was actually wooed by two: the duc d’Anjou, who later became Henri III, and his brother the duc d’Alencon, who I think would be the Monsieur of the poem. (They were the sons of Henri II and Catherine de Medici and their sister Marguerite was Henri IV’s first wife – him being Louis’s father by his second marriage.)
There are some great doodles in royalty’s books – I think George III left some stuff along the lines of “what a load of crap” in his schoolbooks as a boy. 🙂
I think part of the problem is ? A reluctance to want to believe a mentally healthy person is capable of the kind of “feelings” these MRA have for women .
There could be an ‘inclination” too to link “insanity” to horrible things because we do actually have a “not guilty by reasons of insanity ” even in our laws as a legal defense to crimes.My understanding though is that it is VERY difficult to get a judge to agree to let you plea that. I think the reason is its very rare for a person with mental illness to commit crimes who don’t still know right from wrong .
There was a horrific case here in my city . A woman cut off her baby’s arms and the baby bled to death . Because of her history and how she acted before and after the crime ,and dozens of experts she was allowed to plea insanity .They were able to prove she was oblivious to the fact what she did (while she was doing it ) was wrong in any way .In fact she thought it was the right thing to do .
But cases like that are rare . Its blown up in the media similar to child abduction so you start to think its the norm .Lurking around the corner every where.
Not caught up because I just realized I never posted Borg brain bleach yesterday or emailed Viscaria about writing on red flags >.<
Thank you for the brain bleach, they'll be in the Borg archives soon enough!
Now, back to how personality disorders aren't mental illnesses…what? No really, what? When, and where, in the world did you acquire this information? Cuz I could've sworn the personality disorders chapter of DSM IV was covered in my abnormal psych course. And, while I'll grant I was taking a full summer course load and working, I'm fairly sure that setting the curve means I know wtf I was studying…
(Word to the college students // soon to be students here — don't do 15+ credit fall and spring terms and then cram in another 12 credits over the summer while working, and certainly don't do it two summers in a row, it isn't worth the stress)
While I finish catching up I'll debate what time to reset the timer to, and if I get another unicorn out of this. Also, I hate gin, sorry. Fresh mangos sound yums though!
Let me rephrase that . Its not just very rare for someone with a mental illness to still not know right from wrong . But every person who does something wrong is also not someone who even has a psychiatric disorder to chemical imbalances.
I mentioned the case above ? (where it was a case of insanity ?) Not so with Darlina Crowder .Another woman from my area that murdered her children .(two boys) .It was determined she killed her two little boys stabbed them to death while they were sleeping (one survived she had 3) for a life insurance policy she had on them .She had no mental illness. She was simply cold hearted to the core. She was put to death .
Your mind can’t “grasp” that she was mentally “healthy” .That what she did was out of such a deep level of selfishness ,it reached the point of committing the kind of evil and complete indifference to life and suffering that she did .
IOW she was not “mentally ill” (crazy). She was just that selfish .
@lana a large part is our reluctance to believe that some people can be just plain evil. A lot of people I know do not like to believe that our fellow human beings can be both monstrous and evil. The MRA’s believe and say things that are so outlandish and foreign to most people that we don’t want to believe that these people are what we would call…normal, there has to be something wrong with them, so in our own haste to define them we call them crazy or insane, but they are not.
There is something wrong with these people but it is not mental illness…it is simply the insipid banality of evil that we are looking at. It is an ugly truth and I know a lot of us probably do not like using that word but I think it is of better service to use it that to simply write off what these people believe as “crazy” or “insane”
It is a lot easier to believe that some people are “crazy” rather than to acknowledge that some people are just monsters and evil.
People like Paul Elam are well aware that what they are doing is evil, they just don’t care and some of them even enjoy being evil, they are not mentally ill, they are just evil.