Sometimes I wonder if we’re being unfair to Men’s Rights Activists by allowing them to handle their own publicity. I mean, it’s pretty clear that they’re terrible at it. Worse than terrible, really. Terribler. Possibly the terriblest.
I mean, just this week we saw the official social media director of A Voice for Men’s conference in Detroit announcing the conference’s new venue with this:
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/statuses/476822883881459712
Bloomfield now claims this was her attempt to “troll” people like you and me by tweeting what I guess she’s now saying is a thoroughly awful fake quote which for some reason she has decided to attribute to a real person. This makes so little sense by normal human standards that I find this explanation a little hard to believe — but I guess I’m just getting trolled by my own skepticism? Oh, Judgy Bitch, you got me!
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/statuses/476822883881459712
Whoops! I guess I got trolled a third time!
And … oh, for a second there I thought I was going to be trolled again, but I stood firm. For now.
Anyway, all this is just a long intro for some Actual Authentic I Didn’t Make These Up Honest to Goodness Men’s Rights Memes that I discovered on the blog of someone named Francis Roy, an MRA, an AVFM fan, and a bit of a meme enthusiast. The somewhat baffling meme at the top of this post? One of his best.
Which is to say, his memes basically suck, even by meme standards.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, these are all overvalued by at least 997 words. You can find them all in the meme section of his blog, though, be warned, he also posts a lot of graphic and disturbing pictures of dead soldiers and circumcised babies and other horrible things. (Note to MRAs: a lot of feminists, like me, are also troubled by and/or opposed to circumcision. Instead of derailing every discussion of female genital mutilation and alienating potential allies, you might try taking your message to the public at large?)
Anyway, let’s get to the memes. Note: A couple are mildly NSFW.
Here we learn that divorced mothers who have custody of the children are really just keeping them in order to enjoy all that sweet-ass child support cash!
Note: custodial parents who’ve been awarded child support actually receive, on average, about $300 per month. You can almost buy an XboxOne for that! Or, you know, you can try to feed and clothe and care for a child. And pay for child care, and babysitters, and doctor’s visits, and toys, and, you know, shelter. Huh. $300 actually doesn’t sound like that much.
Frankly as a money-making proposition, “stealing me for daddy’s money” seems like kind of a bust.
But let’s just move on to this fine meme, which as far as I can figure it is some sort of attack on underwear models:
Really? Hath not an underwear model eyes? Hath not an underwear model hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick an underwear model, do they not bleed? Does blood not run down their smooth, tight abs?
Pretty sure it does. Seriously. Underwear models need to eat, too! Well, maybe not as much as I do, but come on! Stop the hate!
Oh, did I mention that Mr. Roy apparently considers himself a Man Going His Own Way?
Yeah, let’s just move on.
Lol wut
Oh, come on!
I’m not even a Christian, but, seriously?
I’m going to post two quotes here. One will be from Jesus. The other from a rather well-known Man Going His Own Way. See if you can tell the difference.
Here’s the first quote. See if you can tell if this is Jesus, or MGTOW elder Christopher in Oregon.
Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Here’s the other quote:
I’m going to be blunt. Have you ever smelled a vagina? Seriously. I mean in it’s natural, unwashed state? Really stuck your nose right down there and taken a deep breath?
Once.
My G-d. The stench could have knocked a buzzard off a shit wagon at fifty paces. To this day I swear there was a cloud of flies buzzing around that portal of doom. Sometimes when riding my Harley-Beasties around the rural roads here in Oregon, I encounter dead skunks. Road kill. We have a lot of them here, and when they’ve been baking in the summer sun, you can smell them a long way off even at sixty miles per hour.
Vaginas tend to be even nastier.
SPOILER ALERT: The first quote was the one from Jesus.
Let’s see what else Mr. Roy has got.
Wait, is that one of Mr. Roy’s memes, or did I just accidentally post a pic from my extensive collection of FemDom porn?
By which I mean, yes that was one of his memes and forget what I said about that other stuff.
Ok, one more.
Yaaagh!
Sorry, I didn’t mean to spring that on you. Hopefully you weren’t eating.
But in the unlikely event that you would like to print out your own high-quality color poster of a glowering Paul Elam to hang over your bed, or wherever you hang such pictures, I’ve got some good news for you! Mr. Roy has helpfully provided a downloadable pdf version!
All of the above graphics are by Francis Roy and under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Weird thing – my BIL has that genetic “tastes like socks” response to cilantro, usually, but there’s one salad I make with cilantro that he gobbles up quite happily. How does that work? I’m not sure why in that one dish he’s fine with it, but present him with, say, fresh salsa and he acts like he’s about to hurl.
Is that before or after we focus in the $30k bonus?
Maybe the taste of socks happens to go well with that particular salad?
Soba and socks salad – it’s what’s for dinner.
BS, that would require Paul to have a medical degree and gone through years of post-degree hospital training (trainee intern, house surgeon, registrar).
Next, you’ll be telling me he was board-certified as well. LOL.
Well, I went to college and had a very successful job as an office paper-monkey until I took a big paycut and became disabled. The difference being, I’m not near the grifter Paul is. (If I would, Mammoth probably would’ve run me out on a splintery rail already!)
You know, the fact that Elam could have made a living as a shrink and chose to make a living by scamming unhappy men into giving him money on the internet instead does not actually make him look better than if he’d been unable to make a living before and turned to grifting out of desperation.
Elam was not a psychiatrist. He was a drug counselor. I know a drug counselor in Texas, where Elam lives, who had only a Bachelor’s degree. Maybe he had an MSW, but he certainly isn’t an M.D. or Ph.D.
I have apologized, pecunium. I have apologized for my part in what happened. I am sorry that I hurt people’s feelings.
But, here’s the part you don’t seem to be comfortable with, I was hurt by what was said to me. Was it wrong for me to bring up that there were dozens of comments that I received in return for what I said and that those were also hurtful? Am I supposed to just not bring up that the hurt went both ways? Because I’m not going to pretend that I wasn’t hurt by what was being said to me or that I felt like I was being ganged up on. And I’m not going to say that I wasn’t frustrated over this comment and this one going unnoticed–the comments that my original comment was responding to. I’m not going to pretend that the way that the remarks came through wasn’t hurtful and didn’t reinforce negative feelings I already had because that would be lying.
If you don’t like my apology or it makes you personally feel better to think negatively about me, then that’s fine, but, at this point, I just want all of this discussion of what I said to stop because I, on a very personal level, cannot take it anymore. If you feel that I was dumb or stupid or careless or clumsy or whatever, then can you please just not tell me because I know this already? I know how badly I messed up and I get it, so continuing this at this point just is really not going to help anybody.
Indeed, in Texas, you only need an associate’s degree.
An associate’s degree? Wow, That’s disturbing.
From Pauly’s Woody: “Paul attended college and found work as a very successful psychiatrist until he decided to devote himself to AVfM, likely at a significant pay cut. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Why do you say that “Paul attended college”? You do know that a psychiatrist must be an MD; it’s a doctor-level specialty like cardiology or gastroenterology. Where did Paul get his MD? Was he a psychiatrist and had to give up his medical license for some reason? OK, maybe you meant psychologist, a lot of people don’t understand the distinction, and articles about Paul do describe him as a psychologist. A psychologist needs a Ph. D. Did Paul get a Ph. D somewhere (from a REAL university)? There are all sorts of people who have lesser levels of education; some do good work and some are charlatans, but most of the good people make very little money. Some people call themselves psychologists without having the credentials but if they actually try to practice they are committing a crime. But some charlatans do make good money.
Paul describes himself as “Dean of Student Affairs at FTSU”. I have googled FTSU and found no information about any institution with those initials, just articles about Paul. Can you enlighten us, Woody? ‘Cause it sure reeks of griftery to me.
FTSU is AVfM’s unofficial motto. It stands for “fuck their shit up”, and is from one of Paul’s more infamous quotes (“the thought of fucking your shit up gives me an erection”).
Woody, does being a relentless cheerleader for a burned-out drug counselor turned charlatan ever get old?
P.S.–you don’t just “find work” as a psychiatrist. You have to train for years.
Whoever paid for Pauly’s education is owed a refund.
@emilygoddess: Thanks for informing me. That’s really grown-up stuff, the highest level of intellectual discourse. I can just imagine the clubhouse made of scrap lumber with the sign, “No Grils Alowd.”
I want to be Dean of Students Affairs at AYFSU (Are You Fucking Serious University).
I’m already President of LAYS university.
(laughing at your shit)
“Whoever paid for Pauly’s education is owed a refund.”
All $17.99.
Wherever he was educated owes the world an apology or an explanation.
No, wait. They owe both.
If he had some level of psychology education, that could explain how well he exploits the blind spots in people’s perception and reasoning to manipulate the easily led.
Janet: But, here’s the part you don’t seem to be comfortable with
My comfort with it, or not, is immaterial to what I said. I’m sorry your feelings are hurt. I wish they weren’t. I don’t really see any way people could have addressed what you said (which may not have been what you meant) without hurting your feelings.
I understand that. I’ve been there. What I also don’t see is that you understand that we can’t read your mind, merely your words.
As to the comments you were responding to… so what? (and reading the comments you linked to… I actually understand even less. You didn’t address the question of, Why is “you’re fat” worse than “you’re a failure” or “you’re nothing without me”?
What you said in response boiled down to, “why you tell someone their fat can make it ok”.
Which I didn’t respond to. Others had said all I could have, and more. What I was responding to was your imputation that we “read into” your words things which weren’t there, esp. because you then took us to task for things not responding to things you hadn’t said.
If you don’t like my apology or it makes you personally feel better to think negatively about me
Good grief. Where did I say I thought negatively about you? Show me? Because you are reading things into what I said which aren’t there. Yes, I said I think part of why you are getting the reactions you got is that you didn’t actually apologise. I didn’t say that I think you are a bad person. I, in fact, qualified what I said so as to give you credit for good intent*, no matter how badly you presented your thoughts.
I will say the only reason I am continuing, is because you aren’t letting it drop. I had said all I thought needed saying.
I am willing to accept that you meant no harm
I’m not going to google Elam’s educational background due to the zero fucks I have to give, but there is no fringing way Elam has a PhD. He was a substance abuse councilor, which doesn’t even require a Bachelors degree, much less a Masters or PhD. You just need an Associate (2 yr) degree or a addiction counseling certificate and certain number of hours of supervised counseling to get certified. You can do a lot of good in that job but you aren’t going to make much money, it’s a tough, low paying job with salaries in 25-50k range. No shame in Elam quitting the field though, the burnout rate is very high. Plenty of shame for his current grifter ways however.
I have trouble communicating as it is, okay? Writing is the only way that I’ve ever been able to express myself properly. Being told that I’m clumsy or careless or that what I’ve said is stupid and offensive repeatedly makes me feel like there is no possible way for me to express myself.
To you, saying these things might not seem like a big deal, but, for me, saying this is like saying: You’re a failure at the only thing in your life that has ever consistently made you feel good about yourself. You already can’t express yourself in other ways, so you might as well give up because all you’re doing is hurting other people.
I had one thing in my life that I felt I could do right before today and now I don’t have that anymore. I had one thing that no one had ever said anything bad about.
Just like I didn’t intend to set off a firestorm with one sentence, I’m sure that you don’t mean to imply that I have no positive qualities in my life, but that doesn’t change how I feel. Or how I’ve felt every time someone has suggested something similar today.
And I know that you’re going to say that none of this makes sense because, as I’ve already gotten a pretty good understanding, clearly I’m bad at communication.
And I did apologize, though I’m guessing that even that doesn’t count.
*That’s substance abuse counselor, not councilor. I’d love to blame auto-correct, but that’s on me and my deteriorating brain cells.
I didn’t say you are bad at communication. I said you had communicated badly. Everyone does that. I’ve done it. I’ve done it here. I’ve done it when doing public speaking engagements. I’ve done it when teaching.
As to what I’m going to say, or not… you should stop doing that. Really. For a lot of reasons, not least of which it’s the most alienating thing (from my perspective) you’ve done. All the other things, are; so far as I’m concerned, just things. They don’t carry any really emotional baggage. Telling me what I think/feel/know/will do, those actually do have the ability to impart negative feelings. Yes, I know you are feeling badly.
As I said, I’m sorry for that, but I can’t really help that. The only thing I could do is pretend you didn’t say anything. That’s an impossible (and unfair) burden to put on us. Making us responsible for your sense of self-worth, because we comment on the things you write, and the way you write them is abusive. It’s asking us to put our feelings, emotions, and reasoning aside because it might hurt your feelings.
Well, it might. It may not be obvious (in part because I work to keep it so) but it happens to me too. I make mistakes. I also take stands on controversial issues. I’ve had people make attacking me (in both my personal and professional capacities), calling me incompetent at my profession, immoral in my choices; and advocacy. I’ve been told I’m either incapable of logical thought, or mendacious to the point of not caring about human life. My patriotism, my sense of justice, and my mental health have been called into question.
I’ve had had weeks running where I dreaded opening my e-mail, and knew that going to the parts of the internet in which I liked to spend my time were going to be full of insult, and degradation.
I’ve had things like that come to my home. I’ve had friends come to my work to harangue me because of how they took something I wrote (because I was a journalist). Sometimes it was for things I had no control over; didn’t matter to them, all they could see was what the editors let go to press.
So yes, I understand what it’s like to have your writing, a skill you’ve spent time and effort to get to a level of skill you feel proud of called awful.
And there is nothing I can do about that, unless I am going to ignore everything you write. I don’t mean not respond to it, I mean not read it. Because they only way I avoid the possibility of hurting your feelings is to never respond. And the only way to never respond is to not read it.
And I can’t promise that.