So A Voice for Men, having lost or abandoned the original venue for their “Men’s Issues” conference in Detroit, has announced its new location: A VFW post some 18 miles away from the original hotel where, presumably, most of the conference’s attendees will be staying.
According to Paul Elam, they made the move in large part to spare conference-goers the terrible inconvenience of having to watch the no-doubt riveting presentations from an “overflow room.”
No, really.
In a post last night, Elam declared that all the media attention given to the conference
has produced is a hell of a lot more interest in the conference, and more ticket sales. So much so, as a matter of fact, that we have opted to move to a venue that will seat more people and provide more security than was available previously.
While we apologize for any inconvenience that the move is going to cause, it is nonetheless a positive move for the conference. Because seating capacity was misrepresented to us at the previous venue, we were forced to plan for an overflow room where we would pipe in live events to a monitor at reduced ticket prices.
With the change of venue we will be able to accommodate all attendees in the same space at the same time.
Naturally, the first thing some critics of Elam did when they saw this announcement was to look up the seating capacity of the largest rooms at both venues. The largest room at the Doubletree Fort Shelby, where the conference was originally scheduled to take place, seats 300, with a maximum capacity of 310. The largest room at the VFW post … also seats 300. Or maybe 350. The VFW website isn’t clear.
In other words, Elam expects us to believe that in order to avoid the inconvenience of having to resort to “overflow rooms,” AVFM moved its convention to a venue 18 miles away from the original hotel that might not even offer rooms any bigger than the original venue.
Meanwhile, in the comments to Elam’s post, one would-be conference attendee reports that the Doubletree has canceled his reservation. If Doubletree has decided to wash its hands of the conference attendees now that they are no longer hosting the conference, and Elam is telling the truth about the number of people planning to attend, this could mean hundreds of people scrambling for hotel rooms.
Still, Elam and his troops are eager to present this as a great victory.
It’s weird. You might think that this sort of reality distortion would be impossible in a democratic country in the internet age. Sure, back in Stalin’s day, the Soviet Union’s propaganda machine could present massive failure as success and get away with it – at least to some degree, at least within their own country.
In the wake of a disastrous program of “forced collectivization” of rural agriculture in 1929-30, which left many peasants dead or imprisoned and paved the way for future famines, Stalin famously announced in an article in Pravda that the program had been so amazingly successful that he needed to call a temporary halt so that everyone could catch their breath. The title of his article: “Dizzy With Success.”
The only way you can get away with bullshit this brazen is if you’re a dictator or the leader of a cult – something that A Voice for Men has increasingly come to resemble. AVFMers are expected not only to accept Elam’s leadership; they’re expected to accept his distinctly non-consensus reality – a world turned upside down in which men are the real victims of domestic violence and rape and pretty much everything else, a world in which the Southern Poverty Law Center is a collection of evil bigots and his motley collection of misogynists is the true human rights movement of the twenty-first century.
Like a lot of cult leaders, Elam keeps his troops too busy to think straight in a continual frenzy of pseudo-activism. AVFMers are forever brigading comment sections of newspaper articles and YouTube videos in little squads (AVFMers almost always travel in packs), all reciting the same few talking points.
Weirdly, the dynamics of internet discussions can actually reinforce this kind of intellectual conformity, much as Stalin’s control of the media did in his day. No, AVFMers can’t avoid being exposed to facts that contradict the shared (un)reality of their ideological bubble.
But in internet discussions you don’t have to be right in order to convince yourself you’ve won an argument. You just have to be loud and persistent and unwilling to ever give in. You don’t have to convince anyone else of your arguments so long as you convince yourself. MRAs don’t win many arguments on their merits, but they manage to convince themselves they win every one.
The trouble is that when they step outside of their regular stomping grounds on the internet, this strategy – so effective in generating ideological conformity amongst cult members – falls completely apart.
We’ve seen several spectacular examples in the past couple of weeks. First, we watched a concert organized by Canadian Men’s Rights group CAFE implode after musicians and sponsors realized what they’d been roped into; the pathetically unconvincing attempts by the group to explain away this failure were amazing to behold.
Then we saw AVFM’s Dean Esmay reduce himself to a caricature on Fox (local) news as he rapidly regurgitated standard AVFM talking points like some sort of fanatical ideological auctioneer, apparently unaware that to everyone outside of the Men’s Rights bubble everything he was saying was obviously utter nonsense.
And now we have Paul Elam trying to convince the world that AVFM changed its venue for its conference because, hey, we needed more room!
The trouble with having your head up your ass most of the time is that when you take it out, people tend to notice the smell.
But, hey, as long as the AVFMers are happy with their new venue, I’m happy for them. Janet Bloomfield, the official “social media director” for the conference, posted this triumphant tweet lat night:
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/476822883881459712
She has assured me that this is an actual quote. The “Wayne State cunts” remark is apparently a reference to the Wayne State sociology professor who, er, debated AVFM’s Dean Esmay on the local Fox affiliate the other day. Esmay has also posted a slightly shorter version of the same quote in the AVFM comments section.
So, yes, both the official PR representative for the conference and AVFM’s “managing editor” both apparently think it’s a great idea to refer to women who disagree with them as “cunts.”
Oh, and Bloomfield also thinks it’s hilarious to joke about Elam scamming his supporters of the $29,000 raised for additional security:
https://twitter.com/BhasChat/status/476907717194702848
You can’t buy this kind of publicity, largely because as far as I know there are no PR firms that offer organizations help in destroying the last tiny shreds of their credibility.
LBT … shaking my head. That’s about all I’ve got at this point.
Sometimes I feel like I’d like to take on these clowns (not that I’ve anything to do with multiplicity) but then I think nah, I’d just get pissed off with them.
But then AVfM gets five new readers, so really, it’s a win!
Do fit men smell nicer or something? Or is this a “fat people smell bad” thing?
That game never started, dude. Also, now that you’ve admitted to lying (which we all knew you were doing anyway), why should we trust anything you say?
@thread, has anyone else played Okami? JB’s comments remind me of the way Issun hops up and down when he’s mad
Lea, that is so cuuuuute!
She also compared David to a creationist.
Wow, these people are not good at self awareness.
@LBT
This Multi Moon Lady seems fun. I always love it when people know what’s inside your head better than you do.
It’s not even as if the idea of multiple distinct and real personalities in a single body is that weird of an idea – your personality is in your brain, so why would it be universally limited to one person? Hell, even if it wasn’t, even if our brains were just some kind of tether for spirits or inter-dimensional beings, or hyper-intelligent cats, why would it always be limited to just one connection? I think some people are just determined to believe that the world is small, and that the way things usually are is they way they always are. Even as a skeptic, that attitude seems odd to me.
There is also this turd she tweeted: Blockquote> Great explanation of why girls hunt high school athletes. Stuebenville, anyone?…link
This is the attention she’s proud of bringing to her “movement”.
The rape victim was “hunting” athletes. She’s the predator to JB’s twisted mind?
This is the sort of “conversation” she wants to have about gender.
I’d rather eat under cooked frog legs than have a conversation with these people.
Internalized misogyny is a hell of a drug.
God, how sad is that? You just admitted you’re so inept at your job, you couldn’t drum up attention without farming the job out to someone else. You should put that on your resume.
RE: Kittehs
Sometimes I feel like I’d like to take on these clowns (not that I’ve anything to do with multiplicity) but then I think nah, I’d just get pissed off with them.
Pretty much. I know I got pissed as she got more and more adamant about misgendering me and also more and more assured that my anger was a sign of my lack of contact with reality.
RE: Athywren
It’s not even as if the idea of multiple distinct and real personalities in a single body is that weird of an idea – your personality is in your brain, so why would it be universally limited to one person?
The really obnoxious “skeptics” I’ve encountered basically use Occam’s Razor — the simplest answer is there’s only one person in there, so IT MUST BE TRUE.
Even though they can’t give me a scientific definition of person. Even though they can’t give me any test that would allow me to PROVE I’m a person, or fail while trying. They just say, “Science!” and expect me to believe them.
“@thread, has anyone else played Okami? JB’s comments remind me of the way Issun hops up and down when he’s mad”
One of the best games ever! I’m actually playing it right now! I have the second one too but I haven’t finished it yet. I still think of the yzma cat and honey boo boo when I see JB comments.
So let me get this straight… this “unstoppable movement”, the one that is about to wash over feminism and remake society… needs the people on this blog to garner publicity: that is to say without the mockery we ladle out, you’d be invisible.
That’s the sad. I mean of all the insults I I could think of, “can’t get hits without feminists helping us” wasn’t even on the radar.
“Actually, it would be kind of amusing if nobody turned up, getting sidetracked at the nearest bars to catch the games.”
NEWSFLASH [For release after conference] : 80% of participants agree conference was huge success.
(in much smaller font – the other one was in the bathroom and couldn’t be polled)
AUUUUGHHHHH
Makes me wish Louis was still inclined to rip people a new one on occasion. He used to be so good at it.
Fuuuuuuck … lemme guess, big overlap there with the AsshatAtheist™ dudebros, holders of the One True Scepticism?
Thread: “Unstoppable movement” sounds like the sort of diarrhoea that comes with truly awful diseases.
Apt.
XD
@Pecunium
Well, they’re always complaining that feminists aren’t doing their jobs for them, so really it’s to be expected.
@LBT
The thing is, that’s not even Occam’s Razor! The answer with the least additional required assumptions is the one that’s most reasonable to accept as true. It doesn’t mean the other possible answers are false, just that they need more evidence before it’s reasonable to accept them as true.
I’m perfectly willing to accept “we have no reason to believe it’s true,” but “we know it’s not true” is just ridiculous in most cases.
It’s not a scientific definition, as far as I’m aware, but, to me, a person is a self-aware, thinking entity that has desires and, at least in theory, the ability to bring those desires into reality. I’m sure there are lots of arguments about neurological stuff, but if you have multiple of those shariing your brain, then that sounds an awful lot like multiple people to me.
Honestly, I’m a big fan of skepticism and of the skeptical community, but I think a lot of people lose sight of where, when and why it’s useful. It’s not a tool to demonstrate your own intellectual superiority, but one to protect yourself and others against charlatans. I could be wrong here, but I don’t see you trying to make money from people believing a multiplicity, nor making laws that outlaw… the opposite of that, or giving people untested medical treatments based on your multiplicity, so why should anyone be putting time and effort into disproving it? It seems like a massive waste of time to me and, as I already said, it’s not even like it’s that wild of an idea, it’s just not something that most of us experience.
Oh no she didn’t !?!
GAH! Did you reach through the internet and put Legos in all of her shoes?
LOL!
It does sound like an anal waterfall.
I love you for saying this.
Great. Now I’m gonna think of MRAs every time I clean up dog diarrhea at work.
Maybe we can steal an idea from Dan Savage and refer to explosive diarrhea as “elam” from now on.
1. They will discuss everything but their blatant misogyny and their reactionary understanding of gender and biological sex.
2. By power they probably mean that stupid “apex fallacy” or “frontman fallacy” which really aren’t fallacies at all and are instead cheap talking points derived from straw man arguments against mainstream feminist sociology.
3. You’re a fucking dumbass.
RE: Athywren
why should anyone be putting time and effort into disproving it?
Well, you see, there’s the Law of Conservation of Weird. A lot of people believe that there is a finite amount of weirdness in the world, and that you can not go over your weirdness threshold. If you claim otherwise, you are lying and trying to get your ass kissed for being special. Multi for a lot of people is over the weirdness threshold. It is rare, ergo, I can’t be multi. (Or it doesn’t exist at all because False Memory Syndrome Foundation, which is HILARIOUS since the FMSF is about as scientific as phrenology for abusers.)
Basically, they think that I’m some fluffy unicorn baby who has never experienced difficulty in life, so needs to be slapped out of it before I start thinking I’m special.
Yes, it’s cruel. But I’m not a PERSON or anything. I’m just a fluffy unicorn baby.
RE: Kittehs
Fuuuuuuck … lemme guess, big overlap there with the AsshatAtheist™ dudebros, holders of the One True Scepticism?
Yup. The fundies just say I’m possessed. Much easier to deal with.
RE: Lea
Did you reach through the internet and put Legos in all of her shoes?
I just left. There’s only so much you can do with someone who sees your very existence as a delusion that shouldn’t be entertained.
How much rent do MRAs owe all you Manboobzers for the space we take up in your febrile brains?
Thank you.
I’m a fan of skepticism. (not the horrible movement, the way of thinking)
How the hell do you differentiate a person from someone who only thinks they are a person? Doesn’t self awareness sort of define consciousness? Don’t we already know that our perception of having a single mind with a continuous experience is mostly an illusion anyway? As far as I can tell, my concept of self may just be a very convincing delusion that comes with having a brain. I’m certainly not aware of every process going on in my head that makes up my experience of being me. Free will may not even be real, but it feels that way. Things like time, injury and brain chemistry can change my personality for a time or forever. It can change so much that people often say things like, “I was a different person then”. It seems that people with single personalities are just assuming that their experience of a single self is the only way to experience being because it is common. Is that really different from straight and cispeople deciding that how they are is “normal” and “natural”?
I don’t know. But if they have evidence that it isn’t so, I’d sure like to hear it.
I’m sorry people give you a hard time LBT. It just seems so rude to question someone’s very existence. That’s cold.
Occam’s Razor dis a good tool, but it’s not the end of skepticism….
“we know it’s not true” is just ridiculous in most cases.
you know, it *is* perfectly reasonable in most cases. for instance, there’s a million things the moon could be made of – green cheese, blue cheese, oolitic limestone, unicorn bones – but of all of the myriad possibilities we know most of these are not true because we know what it’s made of (in general). It’s not unreasonable to say “it’s not true” when we have positive knowledge of something. The problem is when you get douches who don’t understand that where positive knowledge ends, and on the other side there are douches that deny positive knowledge – eg creationists. There are certainly huge swathes of human endeavor where we don’t have positive knowledge, don’t have a lot of positive knowledge, or where we can’t get knowledge (at least at this time), but I’m currently really annoyed at the “other ways of knowing” crowd, which has nothing to do with multis or denying the existence of multis – I trust that LBT knows what’s going on inside LBT’s head better than Random Twit on the Internet.