A couple of days ago, Men’s Rights rageoholic Paul Elam angrily denounced journalist Tory Shepherd as a liar for saying that his A Voice for Men website “regularly calls women ‘bitches and whores,’ which it does not.”
Now, anyone who has actually read his website for any length of time knows this is patently false. As if to underscore just how baldly Elam was lying in his post three days ago, the site today ran a post attacking her with this headline:
Apparently, the new line at AVFM is that they don’t call ALL women bitches and whores, at least not on a regular basis, so that’s practically the same as calling no women bitches and whores. Shepherd, in a column yesterday, quoted this rather tortuous, but revealing, explanation from AVFM “managing editor” Dean Esmay:
We do not regularly call women as a class whores or c**ts… we will on occasion call a woman, like Tory Shepherd or a man like (University of Wollongong lecturer) Michael Flood a whore, a c**t, or a bitch… yes, we use heated rhetoric.
Ah, well, then that’s perfectly fine!
I do have to applaud AVFM for its brilliantly counterintuitive PR strategy here. Just a few days after learning that the proposed Male Studies initiative at the University of South Australia may be dead in the water — except for a couple of courses about men’s health — in part because two of the proposed lecturers have connections with the misogynist extremists at AVFM, AVFM is doing everything in its power to live up to its reputation as a haven for misogynist extremists.
All this said, I remain a bit confused about exactly what has happened with the Male Studies initiative at UniSA.
The school, for its part, says that only two courses on men’s health were ever approved. According to the school, the other proposed courses were rejected in 2012.
But the point man at UniSA for the Male Studies initiative, an associate professor at the school’s Centre for Rural Health and Community Development named Gary Misan, seems to have been laboring under the impression that the school was going to go forward with more than one course, describing himself on his official web page as “program co-ordinator for a new suite of courses in Male Studies at UniSA, the first of which will be offered in 2014.”
Roy Den Hollander, one of the controversial lecturers with ties to AVFM (he’s written for them), was also under the impression that his course was going forward, and has apparently been preparing for it. According to Shepherd, who spoke to him after the controversy broke,
US “anti-feminist” lawyer Roy Den Hollander said yesterday that he was preparing a course that looked at how the law favours females when it comes to employment, crime, domestic relations, property, divorce and illegitimate children.
“The course is really looking back at 200 or 300 years of history and how the law treated guys and girls – and it treated girls more favourably than guys and it still does, maybe even more so.
Mr Den Hollander also stood by his claim that men’s remaining source of power was “firearms”. Asked whether he thought that was “extreme”, he said that it was true that it was “really the only area that they control in society now”.
Miles Groth, the Wagner College psychology professor (and sometime AVFM contributor) who seems to have developed the courses, also seemed to have thought that they had been approved — and then cancelled. On his Facebook page, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, he complained that “[t]wo years of preparation and the support of the university from the start now seem to be jeopardy because of unnamed critics making erroneous accusations.”
And AVFM itself trumpeted the alleged Male Studies program in December as “[t]he Biggest Single Advance for Men and Boys in 2013,” declaring unequivocally that
the first degree program in MALE STUDIES begins in 2014. It is supported by the University of South Australia and will be available to students worldwide.
According to the male studies folks, in other words, there was a male studies program approved and ready to go, but after word got out that some of the principals were tied to AVFM, the program was unceremoniously dumped.
But according to the school, there was no male studies program to begin with, just a couple of men’s health courses.
So either all these male studies people are completely delusional, or they may have taken some vague encouragement from school officials as a promise, or the school isn’t telling the whole truth.
I suppose we’ll find out.
NOTE: Just a note on the derogatory language discussed above. There actually isn’t anything wrong with sex workers. The term “whore” is really only problematic when used as a slur.
Well, to be fair, the words slut, c*nt or whore account for just under 1% of AVfM word count.
Everyone knows that the taverns back then discriminated against men with Wenches Nights.
Presumably these creatures think coverture was good for women.
I just… I just don’t get how the MRA can be so damn blind. I just really can’t. I mean, how can they possibly look at that AVFM gave and say “yep, that sounds completely reasonable, that totally doesn’t make us sound like ignorant rubes who have startlingly poor reading comprehension skills who are desperately trying to make the horrible shit we say less horrible”? The levels of cognitive dissonance and sheer force of will needed to remain in that community is incredible, I imagine.
“Men’s Health” is just another word for medicine. The male default insures that women *need* to promote health awareness for women. For example, most doctors do not recognise heart attack symptoms in women because they differ than the symptoms most men have.
MISANDRY!
http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Gender_matters_Heart_disease_risk_in_women.htm
Um…”term”, not “word”.
Kittehserf, sometimes I don’t know whether to laugh at them or pity them.
auggziliary, If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.
Shaun,
That applies to heart problems generally, and nearly killed my sister’s ex-boyfriend’s mother. She was in and out of the doctor’s office with stomach pains, and it wasn’t until her condition became nearly fatal that they figured out it was heart-related. To be fair, stomach pains are… not particularly useful in diagnoses, and she was a youngish, fit woman, so not the stereotypical patient.
But still.
Another problem was that crash tests used to only use a dummy sized as the average man (not even the average person) and child dummies, until a few years ago. Well, turns out that cars are not as safe for people smaller than the average man, which–surprise–includes most women. As a very short woman (5’0”), I can tell you right off: NOTHING in the world is sized for me. I had to cross one very popular car model off my list, because when I adjusted the seat forward enough to reach the gas pedals, I was squished so far up my arms were cramped when I grabbed the wheel, which was (a) uncomfortable and (b) dangerous as hell, because that is where the airbags are. I honestly wonder if airbags are more dangerous than not for me, at least when I’m driving. (As a passenger, I sit pretty far back.)
My term for this is unisex = male.
On a non-safety issue, unisex t-shirts are always sized and styled for men, and I have G cups, so I just don’t bother.
Shaun: I always thought it meant male genital cancer/dysfunction.
And let’s not forget another favourite Paulie-ism for women – those enormous legions of us who bleed honest men dry and then haul them into court on false charges of domestic violence: “Mary-Jane Rottencrotch.” Nice, that, for a University to be associated with. Thankyou, David, for your work.
justabrowngirl, I don’t think I’ve ever felt sorry for these turds! I just have different levels of contempt for them. 🙂
I think the school is lying. I think they thought they’d be all the reverse of avante garde while pretending to be avante garde by setting up a Male Studies department, and got scared of the backlash when they saw that Male Studies is just Bitch Bashing, and by virtue of being a white colonialist school that every single department THEY ALREADY HAVE, except Female Studies, is already Male Studies.
Because to be Male, particularly White Male, is as much the fake default in Australia as it is here in the states. I think the school was made to realize this and backed away from their previous decision, and are now lying about it to cover their tracks.
kittehserf, I have always wondered why people bang their heads against brick walls….. then I found out about these so call man’s.
According to Men’s Health magazine, it’s also about building muscle.
I’ve never read Men’s Health, but I will give it credit for having men on the cover, unlike almost every other “men’s magazine”.
Theoretically, what kind of job could you get with a B.A. in “male studies?” Complaining about feminists on the Internet? And yes, a degree in this proposed field would be B.A., not a B.S., just like Women’s Studies degrees (eat it MRAs, my “soft science” psychology degree is a B.S.).
I feel a little sorry for feMRAs sometimes, though I don’t know why since any of them would throw me under a bus for a pat on the head. But your typical MRA? Pretty much never.
I think the degree would quite obviously be BS, actually.
Viscaria, I agreed… (bs)bullshit: the art of making the idiotic sound sensible.
I’m pretty sure I have a BA. In biology.
I graduated from a small liberal arts college, so they only gave out BAs.
To make it clear and not to offend anyone… I was talking about the well earned “male studies” degreed, regarding my comment above.
What makes me nervous is that our current government would love this sort of shit to be studied. They’re rabidly right-wing and are right now working on undoing anything in the curriculum that isn’t rah-rah-Western-civilisation-Judeo-Christian-is-the-best, or that teaches kids to ask questions or do research. They’re like Teabaggers without the ranting about guns and tyranny.
kiffehserf, not only that but they keep passing laws to stop woman rights at every turn; they don’t understand that their religion/beliefs don’t get to become laws…I mean just look at Texas.
I wasn’t offended, justabrowngirl. Jut making fun of the fact that I have a BA in a STEM subject (granted, one that a lot of MRA types tend to either ignore or butcher horribly–I’d love to make them listen to a lecture by my evolutionary biologist prof on how evolutionary biologists determine if a trait is an adaptation. Hint: it is significantly more complicated than “it exists.”)
In more MRA hilarity, the Spearhead claims the 50s were infected by feminism and cites as proof… Cinderella promoting hypergamy.
Yes, one of the oldest folk tales known (there was a version in ancient Egypt) is proof that the 50s were feminist. A tale that involves a woman’s escape from evil female relatives via marriage.
From here: http://www.the-spearhead.com/2013/12/07/we-shouldnt-get-hung-up-on-the-50s/
I have a fascination with old stories and frankly, the more things change the more things stay the same. The Epic of Gilgamesh includes grief, badassery, the search of immortality, questions, femme fatales and enough homoerotic subtext to make convince modern readers (or at least me) that Gilgamesh and Enkidu were screwing like bunnies off stage.
Has anyone done a modern gay version? The ending would suck, but…