Jessica Roy, a reporter for Time magazine covering A Voice for Men’s recent :”Men’s Issues” conference in Detroit, found herself the target of a vitriolic tirade from AVFM maximum leader Paul Elam before she even sat down to write her account of her time amongst the MRAs.
Elam, evidently incensed about a handful of sarcastic remarks that Roy tweeted during the conference, denounced her as, among other things, a “hack,” “a liar and bigot” and a practitioner of “journalistic scumtardery,” whatever that is. Commenters on A Voice for Men happily joined in the hate, denouncing her as an “airhead,” a “disgrace and a liar,” “lil’ miss hair-o’or-her-eyes,” and a “little asshole [who] will look like a right nazi in five-to-ten years time.” Amazingly, no one pulled out the c-word. Evidently AVFMers are still on their best behavior.
Roy’s “What I Learned as a Woman at a Men’s Rights Conference” appeared on Time.com on Wednesday. Far from the hack job Elam and pals were predicting, her piece turned out to be a long, thoughtful and nuanced account that, while skeptical of AVFM and its brand of hateful nonsense, displayed considerable sympathy for some of the troubled men she met at the conference, men who could benefit from a movement that truly tried to offer solutions for men in difficulty instead of encouraging them to scapegoat feminists and women.
Reflecting on her discussions with several conference attendees, Roy wrote,
When you talk to someone like 68-year-old Steve DeLuca, the legitimate need to remedy some of the issues raised by men’s rights activists becomes more evident. A Vietnam veteran who was injured in combat, DeLuca spoke movingly to me about the two brothers he lost to suicide, and the unfathomable toll the high suicide rate among men can take. There are men out there, like DeLuca and [rape survivor] Brendan Rex, who have a real stake in the movement’s success. The paranoia and vitriol of its leaders can’t possibly do anything for them.
So how did AVFM fans respond to this article? By defending their vitriol. On Time.com, several commenters denounced Roy as “bigot” and a “fascist,” and suggested that their “righteous anger” was the only appropriate response to the evils of feminism.
Never mind that the quote Markham was responding to came from a paragraph in which Roy wrote with sympathy about the suffering of male Veterans and rape survivors.
Meanwhile, an anonymous commenter received upvotes for this, er, nuanced analysis:
In a followup comment, “Guest” doubled-down, suggesting that Roy was a “stinky twit” and a “human monkey.”
Roy made clear that she learned a good deal at the conference. The defenders of AVFM’s vitriol seem to have learned nothing.
NOTE: Picture of monkey party borrowed from here.
Don’t forget all the terrible neglect apologia by those of us horrible enough to point out that not all neglect is intentional and that *gasp* intersectionality is a thing.
GODDAMNED TANK YES I’LL ADD WATER STOP MAKING THAT NOISE!! /yelling at fish tank…
Saw that study: “Gender The perpetrators of sexual abuse are overwhelmingly male. Studies using the law enforcement as well as victim self-report data found that more than 90% of the perpetrators of sexual offenses against minors were male.”
Self-reporting? Post-VAWA law enforcement?
Ah, now we reach the stage of the spin cycle where he implies that children abused by men are liars.
SON OF A GUINEA WORM I BROUGHT HIM BACK. I’m sorry!
RE: rev
Self-reporting? Post-VAWA law enforcement?
Dude, you haven’t given one single statistic. You don’t get to complain. (Especially when self-reporting is vital. But I’m not going to bother explaining it to you, because you spin faster than a fucking DJ on speed.)
Rev, do YOU have any unicorn blood? This babycake isn’t going to frost itself you know, and I want something quality to bring the English Feminist Meeting, Sanford chapter.
Where’s your citations, Rev?
@ Casskitty: “It takes a special sort of misogynistic assbag to think that neglect is worse than sexual abuse just because women are the ones doing it.”
And it takes a typical feminist to qualify child abuse. Felony neglect is more prevalent than child sexual abuse within the home.
Guys! Guys! After three (?) years of posting here, I’m FINALLY going to get to change my icon to something other than a green blotch!
Quick, should it be a pic of me, the vessel, or a penis with a smiley face on it?
revspinnaker is banned for general dishonesty and being a shit.
And nothing of value was lost. Huzzah!
(Does my icon work?)
🙁
It does not. Now I remember why it’s taken me three years to get anywhere with this…
Wait, no, I got it!
HUZZAH! 8D I kinda chose this one at random, but whatever, I can pull something different later if need be. The point is, I finally figured out how to log in to my damn Gravatar and get things changed!
OMG, LBT has an icon!
Huzzah!!! x2 — one for bye bye rev, two for LBT!! (I vote for M.D., all “am I gonna have to smash something?”, or Sneak going BLOOP)
And for anyone actually interested, the link I have him is a meta analysis that goes through the various forms of data collection and the pros and cons of each — that 90% was the same for multiple studies they looked at.
Thank you, David!
Cassandra: World’s End was so pitch perfect about that time period I felt like I was back in college.
Are the anti-Futrellites still going on about Pasolini’s Salo and calling that controversial, but much heralded art film classic “kiddie porn”? The film is wildly available on the blu-ray and DVD in a deluxe edition put out by the best home video company in the US, The Criterion Collection. That doesn’t happen to “kiddie porn”.
http://www.criterion.com/films/532-salo-or-the-120-days-of-sodom
Criterion has a fantastic website so this page has seven essays discussing the film, including
one by the incomparable Catherine Breillat.
Thanks, David. What an ass — implying that because I explained why child abuse was commonly committed by women that meant it was okay. A lying little shit.
Every time I come into contact with the spin doctor I feel like I need a shower.
I checked out the Reddit thread discussing these “accusations” and there are MRAs joking about how we’d totally throw David under the bus if he was a pedophile. And I’m like, of fucking course we would. Any movement that wouldn’t throw out pedophiles is not a movement I want to be involved with.
Also, why did Spinaker choose this thread to necro? Surely a message as important as “this man is a pedo apologist” deserves not to be buried in an old thread? One might almost suspect that the “gotcha” was the main goal here, rather than informing people of a potential predator…
LBT, you got your avatar working!
“Rev”,
LOL, now they were rioting? I propose we call this sort of exaggeration “the boxcutter effect”.
Also, MRA dudes, get a new example. If the worstest oppression evar happened to you over a year ago, you’re pretty unoppressed.
Which means men are committing 70-75% of the sexual abuse. How are women the villains in this one?
On a more general note: as someone who was abused by a woman, and watched the same woman abuse my father and brother, I fucking hate this concern trolling with a passion. You don’t give an actual fuck about the victims of female abusers. You just want to use us to advance your woman-hating agenda. I hope you step on Legos for eternity.
Also, in a culture where the father is expected to work outside the home and have far less contact with the child than the mother, what would paternal neglect even look like?
I did, but since spermjacking was the whole point, I have already emptied the contents into my vagina. Fortunately, I’ve spent years slowly building up a vaginal immunity to hot sauce in anticipation of this very trick, and I look forward to neglecting the kid and collecting that sweet, sweet child support money in just a few months. I promise to buy you all a round of bonbons as thanks for sharing your misandering secrets with me!
LBT has an icon!
Yessssss!
Emilygoddess — well, presumably the same thing, but in practice I strongly suspect that any neglect in a two parent household (where the neglect wasn’t obviously intentional on the part of the father) the blame would fall on the mother. It is, as you allude, her job to take care of the kids. Further, I suspect she might get more shit than a single mother — since obvs her husband is being a good father and bringing home money so why isn’t she spending it on the kids?! Not that single mothers don’t get hell simply for existing, so idk how that would all play out statistically speaking, socially speaking though? I totally see his working being used to further blame her, regardless who’s at fault.
Which probably means fathers are only getting blamed when they’re obviously intentionally neglectful, or single fathers. The former deserves blame, the later is both outnumbered by single mothers and less likely to be in poverty.
I would really love it if anyone has any good academic stuff on the causes of neglect and what forms it takes in practice. I’m curious, for example, when it’s medical neglect how much is willfully not getting the kid to a doctor and how much is economic concerns (and then there’s the religious//belief factor, are anti-vaxxers neglectful? Parents who refuse certain treatments on religious grounds have been denied the legal right to do so, so the kid’s life does trump religious freedom…but that’s an ethics debate, not a statistical question)
Now I kind of want one of us to create a fake feminist tumblr, sprinkle it with a few vaguely feminist posts, and then make a post about how feminists are teaching women to build up their vaginal immunity to hot sauce in order to further our spermjacking activities. And then post it to /r/TumblrInAction, wait until it gets x-posted to /r/MensRights, and then butter our popcorn and watch the histrionics.
Do it!
I’d contribute!
We should also make a fake Etsy site that offers cute hand-knitted spermjacked condom holders.