Well, you have to admit, he’s got chutzpah.
You may have heard that A Voice for Men is sponsoring what it calls the First International Conference on Men’s Issues later this month in Detroit, featuring such notable celebrity speakers as “internationally recognized writer, lecturer and videographer” Karen “Girl Writes What” Straughan, “former mental health professional” Paul “Boy Yells A Lot” Elam, Warren “Boys Aren’t Hurt By Incest a Lot” Farrell, and, well, a collection of other equally exciting names.
But there have been some doubts about it happening from the start. It took some time for the AVFMers to sell enough tickets to enable them to cover the costs of the event.
And now it the costs of the event are going up further: according to a letter that Elam has posted to his site, the hotel that will be hosting the conference has gotten “numerous calls and threats” of a violent nature because of the conference, and is demanding that AVFM cover the costs of additional security at the event.
So Elam has decided that feminists should pay some of these costs, in order to prove they’re “not like that.”
The death threats from feminists, in the attempt to silence these esteemed speakers, has resulted in the conference incurring tens of thousands of dollars in additional security costs.
We plan on launching a fundraiser tomorrow to address those needs, but I want to give the feminists who stand by free speech and assert decisively that these thugs do not represent what feminism is about, to have an early shot at helping us address the gender issues that impact men and boys in an open forum.
He’s even set up a special Paypal button “for feminists only.”
Excuse me?
Let’s be clear here: Death threats are bad. Other sorts of threats are bad. Harassment is bad. Shutting down talks given by people you don’t like is bad. Whoever made the threats against AVFM’s conference, feminist or not, deserves to be prosecuted.
But as someone who has never promoted violence or threats of violence or any form of harassment aimed at MRAs, and who has in fact spoken out against this on numerous occasions, I’m not actually responsible, even indirectly, for the threats against AVFM’s conference. (I haven’t even written about the conference before.) And neither is any other feminist who’s “not like that.”
Indeed, the idea that we should bankroll AVFM’s conference is a bit like asking anti-racist activists to fund a KKK rally because someone or other sent threats to the Klan.
AVFM, as I have documented rather throroughly, is a hateful organization motivated by a deeply misogynistic ideology. Its rhetoric is consistently threatening, designed to intimidate opponents into shutting up and going away. Elam himself — the master of the not-quite-legally actionable threat — once famously told one opponent that
I find you so pernicious and repugnant that the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection. …
Your only real hope is to keep your mouth shut and pretend AVfM and register-her.com does not exist for as long as you can. …
We are coming for you … .
It’s a group whose main form of “activism” has always been harassing individual women; indeed, the Register-Her.com sitte referenced in the above quote (currently offline and being rebuilt) was a phony “offenders registry” that posted the names and some of the personal information of AVFM’s female enemies alongside profiles of serial killers and sexual abusers. AVFM seemed to make a special point of picking vulnerable targets, often college students, evidently feeling that these women would be easier to intimidate.
AVFM has tried to destroy the lives and livelihoods of numerous other enemies, in at least one case through allegedly illegal means.
The site has also participated enthusiastically in misogynistic internet hate-orgies directed at outspoken women like Rebecca Watson and Anita Sarkeesian, women who received and who are still receiving numerous violent threats of rape and murder.
On one occasion, joining up with a hate campaign already heavily populated with white supremacists, Elam targeted a recent college grad for allegedly boasting on her blog that she’s been actively discriminating against white men in her job at the Georgetown Admissions Office. The blog was an obvious hoax and the woman in question had nothing to do with it. Even former KKK leader David Duke realized this before Elam did.
And we can’t forget that AVFM hosted a terrorist manifesto in its activism section for several years, written by Thomas Ball, a Men’s Rights Activist who hoped that his dramatic suicide – he burned himself to death on the steps of a courthouse – would inspire other MRAs to start firebombing courthouses and police stations.
So boys, we need to start burning down police stations and courthouses. … the dirty deeds are being carried out by our local police, prosecutors and judges. These are the people we pay good money to protect us and our families. And what do we get for our tax money? Collaborators who are no different than the Vichy of France or the Quislings of Norway during the Second World War. All because they go along to get along. They are an embarrassment, the whole lot of them. And they need to be held accountable. So burn them out. …
You need to flatten them, like Wile E. Coyote. They need to be taught never to replace the rule of law. BURN-THEM-OUT!
(Emphasis mine.)
AVFM finally removed the manifesto from its “activism” section shortly after the Boston Marathon bombing brought the issue of domestic terrorism back into the limelight. But the site still hosts numerous articles glorifying the author of this manifesto.
Oh, and those associated with AVFM are not above harassing their male critics as well. I get a lot of weird, creepy and threatening emails and comments. It’s rare that the senders are dumb enough to do it under their own name. But that was the case with a creepy and threatening voicemail message I received at 1:38 AM one winter night from a longtime AVFM fan and tireless poster-paster that Elam once described as a “One Man Army” and “an MRA’s MRA.”
And this is the organization that expects feminists like me to pay for its security costs?
I don’t think so.
*Jaw drop* Peter was a Pell? I’ll get on it right away! If anyone wants to help, toss me links to the other threads he pooped in. I don’t want to miss anything.
Uhm. Not that I have a devive that lets me do that. At all. Nope.
(From magnesium’s link)
A police spokesman told The Detroit News that the hotel had contacted the department about hiring off-duty officers to provide security, but he told the newspaper that police had not been notified about any threats against the hotel or the conference.
The hotel’s owner told the newspaper he was unaware of the conference and any threats made against it, but he said it wasn’t unusual for hotels to require additional security for some events.
Katz,
Here he is claiming that the Co-Alpha forum guys could just as easily be black women.
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/05/31/coalpha-forum-member-on-elliot-rodger-had-he-just-butchered-as-many-sorority-girls-as-he-could-he-would-have-been-a-true-hero/comment-page-2/#comments
@katz – Peter showed up on the CoAlpha thread here , but I don’t think he dropped any biographical info. It was mainly just patronizing BS.
Ninja’d!
Was it Peter or Jules that I thought might be Pell due to the lack of quotation skills? If it wasn’t Peter, might want to give Jules a sock check.
Hahahaha, Esmay comes across equal parts paranoid and petulant in that Raw Story article.
Also, where is my cut of the multi-billion dollar hate industry that is feminism, guys? I’ve been a feminist blogger for over three years and I have received exactly £70 for my trouble. ARE YOU LOT KEEPING IT FROM ME!?
And this is where Pell entered this thread https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/06/01/a-voice-for-mens-threatener-in-chief-paul-elam-demands-that-feminists-pay-security-costs-for-his-groups-conference/comment-page-2/#comment-501462 shortly followed by the whole indignation at being accused of mansplaining and claims that French is a race 🙂
Guys, the letter has disappeared from the AVfM website! Looks like someone realised it looked like the least legit thing in the whole world.
Of course, it could be possible that Elam is partly telling the truth…perhaps the Doubletree is requiring that avfm pay for additional security. Elam uses this to make up a story about death threats and exaggerates the amount of security required and how much it will cost. He then is able to raise more than is needed and can skim a little of the top for his personal use.
I just realized that the syllables from “straw feminists in your head” match with the song “pink elephants on parade.”
In the light of Paul and his friends continual questioning of whether death threats made by the MRM at women are real, I think it is only fair that Paul Elam start by providing evidence of the veracity of his claims.
We’ll need the name and number of the appropriate hotel personnel who can verify the existence of the threats followed by access to the email account so we can verify the existence of the emails. We’ll also need access to the recorded records of all phone messages as well.
To quote many a MRA and their supporters; “If they can’t provide that then clearly they are lying.”
I’m excited to see if they put up another DIFFERENT letter that fixes some of the obvious mistakes like the letterhead and the total lack of adherence basic formal letter writing conventions.
😀
Curiouser and curiouser. Surely this is the work of the fem-hackers cell of the feminist terrorist organization. It couldn’t possibly be because Elam succeeded in bilking $25,000 from his fanboys and doesn’t want to risk anyone pointing out how fake his home-made letter is.
Of course, if the letter is a fake and AVfM has both published it and alerted the media to the supposed death threats, I would anticipate that the hotel owner & manager would be pretty hacked off with them. Indeed, if I were the owner & manager, I would be instructing my lawyers to explain to Paul Elam that he can expect to compensate my hotel for any loss of reputation and of business due to the adverse publicity, including but not limited to any customers cancelling their reservations for the conference dates and any other conferences cancelling their events after reading of the issues attending this one.
Anyone any knowledge of libel law in the USA? ‘cos in the UK, not having done enough of an investigation to ensure that the fiction you publish is true – not a valid excuse. So ignorance is not a defence.
tinyorc – that would make total sense! Hotels always start with rough draft correspondence, and then follow up later with the polished version.
Incidentally, commenter Echofoxtrot at AVfM is advocating carrying hornet spray at the conference. Just in case.
They’re taking hivemind way too literally.
I see what you did there!
Titianblue — libel is pretty much impossible to prove here, unfortunately.
Echofoxtrot? Let me guess, privileged guy who was never in the military because mommy and daddy paid his college tuition appropriating military lingo?
I wonder what gun laws in MI are. It wouldn’t surprise me if these douches all brought their guns and one of them accidently shoots himself in the foot.
But you’ve decided to blame her anyway.
Typical.
“I hate to sound so gloom-and-doom…”
Er…he actually sounds pretty excited (and detailed) about the prospect of spraying toxins at someone. From 25ft away.
@wwth regarding gun laws
michigan honors carry permits from the following states (basically, all of them):
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, New York City, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming
those with gun permits in the following states/territories cannot bring their guns to michigan:
Guam, Puerto Rico, Vermont, Virgin Islands, American Samoa, District of Columbia, N. Mariana Islands
source; http://www.usacarry.com/concealed_carry_permit_reciprocity_maps.html
just an FYI — this is faux, but i have signed up for a wordpress account so i could use my fabulous kitty, boris, as an avatar. my user name of choice had already been taken, so i altered it somewhat
– – – – – – – – – –
i know i am late to this party, but shall start addressing things in a first come/first serve basis.
re the OP — yeah, i think that feminists should donate on elam’s site to give their two cents, but for the fact that they would have to look at elam’s site and all. i say this because a group of like minded merry pranksters including me, routinely donated $0.02 to that infamous child killer and woman beater extraordinaire, george zimmerman. we used prepaid debit cards and fakey methods, but in order for him to collect his two cents, he had to spend 30 cents in paypal fees. it provided lots of laughs for lots of folks.
re: pepe le pew aka peter lacroix — wow, just wow. i intended to respond to some of his nonsense, but it hardly seems worth it now, as he was outed as a troll with a past. it was pretty amusing to watch that meltdown.
re: judgysnitch — no, i am not going to contact some random woman on the internet for doing something she considered fun for any reason on your say so. i do not know you, i do not know emma, but you will have to forgive me for questioning your motives.
re: upcoming ‘international mens conference extravaganza’ — i don’t think these folks have the ability to organize themselves out of a paper bag, much less make activism work for them, as evidenced by their 10 or so year history of failing to accomplish anything. besides, who schedules such a ‘massive’ conference on such short notice, in detroit, of all places? there is nothing about this letter supposedly from double tree that looks legit.
i look around my small college town and see fabulous things that feminists have done to make this a better community. many are associated with the university to provide education and the well being (i.e. safety) of women on campus. more specifically, i think of our local battered women’s shelter/DV hotline which provides service for three counties. date night for my husband and i was taking a 4 hour shift of answering phones when other college kids were whooping it up. after a couple of years, i was offered stable, but part time employment through them. this shelter was an older home (large, victorian era) that had been purchased, maintained and operated by women, with some grant assistance. it required significant amounts of organization. i guess all those years of organizing school bake sales etc., kind of paid off when the chips were down. the older workers made it a point to pass along such knowledge to the younger ones. heck, we even had a list of resources to refer abused men on the rare occasion that they called. (i think this blows a lot of MRA talking points out of the water. when they called, we listened and provided whatever help we could, short of providing shelter which would have been inappropriate.)
Yup, nothing says trouble like “super fun”.
Before this Emma doxxing episode, I just assumed nothing could make me lose respect for JudgyB, because I had none to lose. After seeing her flail her arms here in an attempt to create the illusion of actual evidence, in order to smear a critic of MRAs with accusations of death threats… wow. Take a look at your life decisions lady, you’re a lying crank and an online stalker.