Debate: Matt Binder of the Majority Report vs. Paul Elam of A Voice for Paul Elam

So what’s the format? Video, audio, text? I can’t imagine how the hosting site matters, unless they’re physically in the same room.

Besides, Paul wasted a golden opportunity for later backpedaling. If the debate were hosted off AVfM, and people object to the shit he spews, he could claim his words were tampered with in some way.

I like matt but he doesn’t seem like the debating type especially when it’ll be controlled by avfm. Hopefully he does well though.

Dean Esmay as moderator. Ha! It’s just going to be the two of them yelling at him nonstop.

This is going to be brutal. I’m going to call it now: Elam will snottily school Binder on how to correctly pronounce his surname to throw him off-balance.

It will be moderated by AVFM operations manager Dean Esmay, who has committed to fully impartial management of the debate. He will offer no opinions of his own, and indeed will be there simply to introduce the debate, the speakers and keep time. He is expected, and we are sure he will follow through, to moderate the debate and enforce rules without passion or prejudice.

We want to acknowledge that Mr. Binder has made quite a concession to agree to do this debate in a venue that has the potential for bias. AVFM management is pledged to ensuring that he gets fair treatment, exactly according to the promises we made him when arranging the debate.

Mmhm.

Yeah I saw that a few days ago on youtube. I watched Matt Binder’s reports on the intergalactical men’s human’s rights conference, and I think this is going to be pretty bad. It’s clear that MB is not familiar with AVfM beyond the superficial. At least that’s what I perceived. I predict a pretty shitty debate where he will fall in all of Elam’s rhetorical traps, and provide publicity for AVfM. But I may be cynical.
If MB turns out to be good, I doubt Elam will resist being dishonest, just like he was after his debate with David a few years ago.

Oh god, that Miley Cyrus selfie doesn’t ever get less creepy.

And the snotty-nosed “you’re being rapey!” “gotcha” attempt doesn’t ever get less snotty-nosed.

Any chance of anyone getting in touch with Matt and briefing him, for mercy’s sake?

Also this

https://twitter.com/bob_ham/status/487276869272612864

So he isn’t even allowed to know what topics Tough Guy Elam picks so that he can prepare. I don’t know much about Binder, but maybe he can at least say something that gets Elam worked up into a good frothing rage for the sake of entertainment.

@magnesium

You know how to post fancy full tweets in comments? Are you a wizard?

Yes, MRAs. Yes you are. If you look at a picture of a woman/girl and view her as an object – regardless of how she appears in the photo – you are objectifying her.

Wait though – “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”.

Isn’t a picture by definition an object already, and depending on the framing, one that intrinsically commodifies the subject, be it male, female or whatever? An advertisement that features an airbrushed image of a heavily made-up Pretty Person liberally draped with whatever crap is being sold, is not the same thing as that person.

@Phoenician

The picture isn’t what is being lusted after. They are not looking at the photo and thinking that the photo (being a collection of pixels or chemical reactions to light on a piece of treated paper) itself is sexy in the way someone with a fetish might consider a pair of high heels in and of themselves sexy.

“Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” is true because the painting of a pipe is not a pipe itself, just as (if we’re going to follow this train of thought further) none of the words I am using here are the concepts, feelings or objects they describe.

The word “tree” is not a tree and all that, but when I type the word “tree” you still know what I mean because we share a language and we’re both talking in good faith and not trying to derail a conversation through clever rhetoric.

The persons in the quote are lusting after the PERSON in the picture, whom they have relegated to the status of an object which exists for them to lust after. The person in question has not, themselves, become an object because they took a photo which is itself an object. This is a different thing from thinking that a person whose likeness is captured by an image is attractive. The difference is largely one of further reaction after viewing the image and one which is unknowable except via expressions of those reactions but you wanted to talk art.

If I look at an image of a pretty person and demand that the pretty person in question give me more access to images of them and dance for my amusement and arousal, I can be said to have objectified them. That is not the beginning nor the end of objectification, of course; if I see a pretty person on the street (the image of them being in my mind because the eye takes images), I can be said to have objectified them if I pointedly stare at the parts of their body I personally find attractive or sexually arousing and to have treated them as an object if I then make lewd comments about those body parts to their face (or to my friends elsewhere) and then refuse to feel shame when that person, being a person and not the object I perceive them to be, tells me to piss right off because they don’t appreciate being treated that way.

TL;DR: A person does not become an object when they take a photograph of themselves. The objectification is on the part of the viewer. A pipe is an object and a painting of a pipe is not a pipe and it is also not a photograph of a living human being who will then read people talking about all the sexual things they would like to do to them.

How can Dean Esmay possible act as a moderator? Don’t people usually pick someone… I don’t know, neutral?

No such thing. You’re either with the MRAs (particularly Paul), or you’re part of the feminazi Google-programming, government-fund-stealing conspiracy to dispose of men and steal their sperm!

I predict a pretty shitty debate where he will fall in all of Elam’s rhetorical traps, and provide publicity for AVfM. But I may be cynical.

Hopefully he’ll have done some research in preparation for the debate. But I share your concern. I’m sure MRAs will be posting the video or transcript at us for years to come, claiming that “feminists can’t debate our manlogic” or whatever.

Aaaaand then I saw Phoenecian’s post. Dude, no.