So the other day, in writing about the shutdown of MGTOWforums.com, I quoted a rather ironic comment from Men’s “Human Rights” Activist Paul Elam about the site, which he denounced as a hive of “self-consuming bitterness” that was essentially
one rolling “cunts and whores” diatribe after another, spiced only with vicious attacks on men who were deemed less than worthy by Nacho Vidal’s standards.
The irony, of course, was that if you replaced “Nacho Vidal’s” name with Elams’s, his statement was in fact also a perfect description of his own site, A Voice for Men.
But I didn’t really have the space to properly document just how pervasive “‘cunts and whores’ diatribes” are on AVFM. So today I’d like to start that process, by looking at some selected examples of times in which contributors to AVFM — not commenters, but actual article writers and in some cases staff members — resorted to the c-word to make their points, whatever the hell those happened to be.
The c-word is remarkably popular on AVFM; going through the site’s archives, I found more than three dozen posts in which it appeared, sometimes by itself, and sometimes as part of a clever new portmanteau word. In one recent post, for example, Diana Davison and John Hembling declared Canada to be “a first world cuntry.” In another post, alimony became “cuntimony.”
But generally, the word appears in its natural state. While there are a few instances in which the word doesn’t reflect badly on the author — it’s found in a quotation from someone else, for example — it’s generally used straightforwardly as a slur; there’s nothing ironic or “satirical” in its usage. Some of the time it’s directed at specific women; other times at feminists. But it’s often directed at women in general.
The writer most fond of the term, ironically enough, is a woman, Diana Davison, who seems to slip the word into pretty much every post she can figure out how to. Probably her most impressive achievement, at least in terms of c-word usage, is a post titled “It’s a Woman Problem,” which starts out with this little zinger:
Women are facing a very real and grave problem in our culture: They are obnoxious cunts.
Lovely. Later in the post, she informs us that
Men are objects to women by which they gain social status and it is not something men have orchestrated, it is just an easy and convenient measure on “the scale of cunthood.”
In the end, she concludes:
All evidence indicates that Women’s Studies from early childhood education is a great idea. They just need to change the focus from women whining about their victimhood to women learning about how they victimize each other and teaching them to stop being cunts.
In other posts, she derides feminists as “lying, hypocritical cunts,” denounces Betty Friedan as both a “a complete cunt” and a “narcissistic twat,” and declares New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd to be “either lazy, sloppy, dishonest, or a genuine cunt” if not all of these things.
Another A Voice for Men contributor fond of the c-word is August Løvenskiolds. In one melodramatic tirade, he declared:
Women, through their sexual and reproductive capabilities, have always had a vast amount of power and influence over men, but this power cloaks itself in denials and subtleties in order to preserve itself. Cunt-power is cunning but every now and then, it peeks through the veil to expose a fetid maw of endless hunger and hatred.
In a “lighter” piece mocking those concerned about sexual harassment in the tech world he made a joke about how “C++ means “Cunt plus Oral plus Anal”, a brutal evaluation of women’s utility in programming.”
“Cunt” isn’t the only vagina-related insult favored by the writers of AVFM. “Twat” is also popular, particularly with Diana Davison. Paul Elam and Dr. Tara J. Palmatier both apparently think it’s hilarious to call Twitter “Twatter.”
Of course the person who sets the tone for AVFM is Elam, and he’s not exactly shy about using the c-word himself. In one notorious post he now insists was partially “satire,” he wrote:
[W]omen are often excused from killing someone whom they allege has abused them. They can shoot them in their sleep and walk. Happens all the time. It’ll even get you a spot on Oprah, and cuntists across the cunt-o-sphere will be lionizing you.
And he’s fond of using the term to describe specific women he dislikes. In one post, he declared actress Katherine Heigl a “misandric cunt;” in another he denounced Good Men Project Publisher and CEO Lisa Hickey as a “disingenuous cunt that makes her living off trying to turn men into lap dogs.”
Elam is well aware that this sort of language offends people and can even alienate many MRAs. But he has regularly defended it on the grounds of, well, I’ll let you try to figure out what he’s saying in this long, profanity laden screed (which, yes, does include the word “cunt”).
But I think my favorite Elam screed involving the c-word has to be the mouth-foamingly angry rant he wrote responding to a Jezebel piece on … a Summer’s Eve commercial featuring Cleopatra. It’s pretty unhinged, even by his standards; you may wish to go read the whole thing.
But here are some excerpts, in which he lectures the Jezebel writer about her proper place in the universe:
See, cupcake, you are not a goddess or any other kind of deity. You are just a woman, and that smooth spot between your legs? Just a pussy.
As for being the center of civilization; sorry, that spot is still reserved in the real world for those who built it. That would be men. …
The expectation that you are something more than human generally tends to indicate that you are actually something less.
Imagine a world in which you are just another person and not so easily offended by the sales of pussy soap. Fewer people would have to suffer your droning like a pipe organ about the fact that some advertiser acknowledged that Cleopatra had a cunt …
Pussy is power. Always has been. Just like the commercial said, men have fought and died for it. And much, much more. The truth about pussy power eviscerates every lie about female powerlessness ever pawned off by feminists on a culture so afraid of that power that it would not even call them on the lies.
So, yeah, Paul: “cunt diatribes,” your site has them. And you write some of angriest of the bunch.
I’ll cover AVFM’s use of the word “whore” in another post.
David Futrelle
Hmmm… This is totally “not” sexist! They do such a good job of “promoting” men’s rights and fighting the “oppressive matriarchy.”
It doesn’t matter if Elam is self-aware, as long as the readers never put two and two together and the donations keep rolling in.
God, they’re so ridiculous and I want to troll them so badly.
Also: dude, please tell me the “seaward” gag is also an Arrested Development reference.
Oh, AVFM. Will you never learn?
These people seem oddly obsessed with genitals that a great number of them do not possess. How saddening.
That’s awesome. The two sentences are perfect together, painfully unaware that he’s dissing himself.
emily, well, my using the picture was an Arrested Development reference. It looks like the sailboat was actually named that; I don’t know if that was a joke or a reference or what.
Maude, ha! Glad someone else noticed that too. He’s so completely un-self-aware.
So… men built the world, but women have power over…. I don’t understand.
Has anyone ever attempted to draw what they are trying to say in some kind of info-graphic or something? It is very hard to follow. One has to be really into hating women for that, I would imagine.
Wow. It really is something to see all those ragey, slur-filled diatribes together in one place. It really does drive home the fact that these people just plain hate women.
And thought nothing could really get to me anymore, heard it all, but that “C++” just really pissed me off. That is a man declaring outright that women are only good for one thing: sex. And every person commenting on that article seems to find it all “hilarious.” Not horribly sexist. “Hilarious.”
Yes, yes, fellas, nobody will fuck you unless she’s got a bad case of internalised misogyny, and you still hate her for being a human who might cock-block you. You’ve said it all before, y’know.
I can’t imagine spending as much time obsessing over genitals as these guys do, whether it’s my own or how to get at someone else’s. I think about whether my feet are hurting more than that, I swear.
auggz – what about Fidelbogen? He’s … different. 😛
What a fantastic human rights movement!
It doesn’t surprise me that Elam wrote a rant about a Jezebel post. I comment over there too and it is so ridiculously infected with MRA trolls. Far more than here because Gawker Media sites are very lightly moderated. They often claim they aren’t MRAs, but for some reason they all spout identical MRA talking points. Every time there’s an article about rape, they swarm on in as if they have computer chips implanted in their brains that alert them whenever an article about rape or other sensitive issues is posted.
Why do people who spend all day monitoring feminist and feminist leaning websites waiting for good trollpurtunities fancy themselves superior creatures? It just doesn’t make sense.
Way to not contradict yourself there.
These people are so full of hate it boggles my mind how some media outlets who report on them just see them as a poor, harmless men’s movement who just want to talk about male suicide but the meeeeeean feminists wont let them (like those covering the GWW/Ryerson thing)
Maybe this is one of those reasons feminists take issue with MRAs and their pretend quest for “equality” because all they do on their own sites is call women and feminists nasty slurs.
I have just been pointed to this paper (behind a paywall but the abstract sums it up): http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886914000324
I’m going to extrapolate beyond the data points a little and say that I hypothesize that this result will also hold for people who write hateful blog posts. Science is onto you, P Elam (or Pseudomonas aeruginosa as I prefer to think of you).
“Cunt-power is cunning”. I guess so, since they come from a similar root, word, as does “kunst”(art), kenaz, rune suggesting both creative fire and/or a…yeah. Yet misogynists expect me to feel put down by it? LOL
Their other favorite, well origins are in contention, but I remember in Egypt “Tuat” was the underworld, and also the temples had an inner sanctum built in them know as “duat” or “holiest of holies”. Again, I’m not hurt. But don’t worry, I don’t believe I’m a “goddess”. Nor do I believe that about Cleopatra, she was a Grecian woman, no matter what Summer’s Eve commercials are telling these guys.
Kiwi girl – that abstract really does sum them up, though it needed to add the word “losers” somewhere.
Sounds like something MLK would say.
I for one am just glad something other than Tarantosaurus Sex is the first thing to greet me when I load the blog. In spite of my attempt to associate him with a mudskipper, he and that post are still a bit triggering for me (no idea why).
As for this post, I feel like now is the time to share my attempts at reclaiming the words cunt and twat.
Cunt shall now hence forth be used to describe something that required much bravery and/or courage. For example: “Para sailing off of that cliff sure took some cunt!” or “What do you mean you’re nervous about presenting your doctoral dissertation in front of the board!? Grow a cunt!”
Twat, on the other hand, shall hence forth be used to describe something so indescribably cool that no other word could possibly suffice. For example: “That movie was sooooo twat! I totally want to see it again!” or “That was the twatest thing I’ve done all day!”
Feel free to use and spread.
Since when is a vulva a smooth spot?
katz, I think he may have confused women with Barbie dolls.
@ Katz
“Since when is a vulva a smooth spot?”
Ya know, I wonder about that. Don’t most women over the age of twelve have some sort of pubic hair situation going on in that general vicinity? :/ Not the smoothest of spots on my body, I assure you.
Thanks for that link Kiwigirl. I bookmarked it for future deployment in troll mockery.
If you become so excited every time you see one that your vision blurs, it appears smooth.
@ kiwigirl
Awesome link. I saw an article on Feministing but its super cool to have the actual study. Thanks!