If the Men’s Rights movement is looking for a celebrity endorser, I think I’ve found just the guy for them: the mixed martial arts fighter, and erstwhile porn actor, War Machine, currently sitting in jail on charges of brutally beating and attempting to kill his ex-girlfriend, porn star Christy Mack.
Men’s Rights activists should be able to look past these criminal charges; after all, as they remind us all the time, women are forever falsely accusing innocent men of all sorts of terrible things.
And in so many ways War Machine is perfect for them. An MMA fighter, he’s already only one letter away from being an MRA. A misogynistic asshole with rage issues, he’ll have no trouble fitting in with the Men’s Rights crowd. And, especialy important for a movement that has a lot of trouble getting any good PR, he’s a bit more comfortable on camera than the Paul Elams and Dean Esmays of the world, with experience on television (on the reality show The Ultimate Fighter: Team Hughes vs. Team Serra), and in seven films (albeit pornographic ones).
Best of all: he’ll need no ideological education from what A Voice for Men likes to call Fuck Shit Up University. War Machine – real name Jonathan Koppenhaver – is already an outspoken proponent of many of the Men’s Rights Movement’s core beliefs.
Consider these selections from a little Men’s Rights manifesto War Machine wrote a few years ago during a previous stint behind bars, serving time for felony assault after two bloody bar fights. His rant, which a friend posted to the internet, would fit right in with the sort of stuff we’ve seen regularly posted on the Men’s Rights subreddit, or The Spearhead, or A Voice for Men. I’ve bolded some of the Men’s Rightsiest bits:
The oppression of MEN is worse than oppression of Jews in Nazi germany, worse than the slavery of Blacks in early America…
There has always been the oppressor and always the oppressed. Before, it was blatant … NOW the oppressor has learned to disguise his evil. You can see man, but you can not see MEN. How easy it is to oppress a minority that is invisible to the eye! How genius of the oppressor! And what a better target too! …
Men challenge injustice from Government, MEN fight for their Constitutional rights, that are slowly being taken away every year. …
And they don’t just oppress us by making more laws and taking away more freedom, they are far more clever than that! Ask yourself what your REAL dream was?? If you gave up on this dream, why? Because of the brainwashing of the Government, that’s why! They taught you to “play it safe.” They told us a responsible man has ONE wife, a house, good credit, good job, and kids. How are you supposed to chase your dreams while maintaining all of that!?
Men are supposed to take risks and be aggressive! What accomplishments have ever come of a man scared to risk it all!? None!? Where would the world be? Still ‘flat!’ Still ‘Earth at the center of the universe!’
If any of you have your Men’s Rights Bingo cards out, I’m guessing you might already be close to scoring a bingo. We’ve got a comparison to slavery that could have come straight from the pages of A Voice for Men, a marriage-is-death-to-male-dreams rant that could have been borrowed from any MGTOW forum, and an evo-psych-esque argument that men are the true risk-takers and the world’s real innovators.
And I don’t think War Machine would have much trouble with Paul Elam’s “Bash a Violent Bitch Month,” either.
[I]t’s Christmas day and I’m laying in my bunk wondering “Why in the hell do American men get married!?” … If your wife is being a bitch you can’t slap her, if your wife is yelling at you, God forbid you yell back … Next thing you know it will be illegal to fuck your wife! LMAO! Maybe then, MEN in this country will get the fucking hint and MOVE! This country forces you to be a bitch!
In another online posting, War Machine touched on another Men’s Rights hobbyhorse, the notion that the justice system is stacked against men:
[L]ook at the prisons, they are FULL of MEN, not women. Are men “evil” and women not? Or do the laws target and attempt to restrict NATURAL MEN’S BEHAVIOR? How many of the HEROES in American history would avoid prison if they lived today? Davey Crockett? Thomas Jefferson? David Bowie? General Grant & General Lee? Shit, George Washington. … Laws target MEN and men’s behavior. Women want to bitch and cry about their rights and equality… LMAO! MEN are the ones locked away like animals, while women run free!
Someone might have to explain to War Machine that David Bowie is not actually a famous American HERO but a famously androgynous British musician who once recorded an album called “Heroes.” (Mr. Machine may be thinking of James Bowie, a well-known 19th century American frontiersman and slave trader, and the guy the Bowie Knife is named after.)
But other than that, he seems ready to go.
There is, of course, that whole attempted murder charge to deal with.
It’s true the Men’s Rights Movement has had few problems in the past rallying behind men with histories of violence. But War Machine might be a harder sell as a Men’s Rights hero. His alleged attack on Mack left her with a cracked rib, a ruptured liver, numerous broken bones, missing teeth and her eyes swollen shut. (See here for photos of her injuries; obviously this link is NSFW and could be triggering.)
While Mr. Machine denies attacking Mack, he joked to a TV host last year that if she were to leave him “I would just kill her” and get a tattoo saying “Rest In Peace” above the tattoo of her name he has on his neck.
And several hours after allegedly trying to murder her, War Machine tweeted this lovely message about his ex:
https://twitter.com/WarMachine170/statuses/497663075831787521
War Machine does seem to be at a low point in his life. Even aside from the charges he faces, and the time he seems likely to serve, his career in porn is almost certainly over. The “Alpha Male” clothing line he helped start wants nothing to do with him. Nobody but the prison system seems to want this guy.
In other words: Men’s Rights activists, this is your chance! War Machine may not be the, er, hero you want. But he’s certainly the hero you deserve.
Yeah, like, I actually actively try to stay out of the way in suicide support, because I fucked it up one time and OH MAN THAT IS NOT SOMETHING I EVER WANT TO FUCK UP AGAIN. I am still afraid that one day, I’ll be in that situation again, and I’ll fuck it up again, and this time, the person won’t live to hate my guts afterward.
Unfortunately, due to the demographics I’m in… that means I’m around a LOT of people who have depression, suicidal ideation, or suicide attempts. It’s meant that I’ve actually pulled back on a lot of my personal relationships, but oh fuck no, never again. Never a-fucking-gain.
@GrumpyOldMan
This reveals the true meaning of Humanist Counter-Theory.
Auntie alias
“Indeed. I suggested that in a comment section once and you can imagine the response, I’m sure.”
-_-‘
Grumpyoldman
“Doesn’t the AVfM policy boil down to: Don’t do anything human because we might get sued?”
I think it’s more of “Don’t help men because how are we going to derail feminists/women?”
I go to yesallwomen twitter and they do this to them.
It’s doesn’t make sense that they would get sued to at least show a little compassion by placing links like David did.
I thought their policy was “why do for yourself what you can complain about a woman not doing for you”.
Dear AVfM
editorswebmasterGuy Who Gets All the Monies:I have read over the following from your
adviceform letter re: people who are suicidal on your forums:I advise you re-write it as follows:
Yours sincerely,Fuck off,A Man with a Cat
Oh! That reminds me. Hasn’t Elam, or some other AVFMer, actually said “Kill yourself” to someone over some point of disagreement or other? Because THAT would be worth suing his ass over, especially if someone did it…or tried to.
emilygoddess:
It was for me, and I fully realize it was very “notallmen.”
In other news, kickboxing was a lot a fun! No Rambos, except maybe the instructor, but he was very good natured about it. I’m generally not a fan of super-cut dudes, but um…wow.
Wait… hasn’t Elam been touting his cred as a psychological counselor? Now he doesn’t know jack shit about counseling?
Somehow, I suspected that may have been the case all along.
I know this is super late, but I was away at a go club so…
Redpoppy:
As wonderful as your bad jokes were, there was one re Kevin Sorbo that you seemed to have missed! The most obvious one in the world! It would have been incredibly painful. I’m… I’m feeling an emotion I can’t describe. Sadness? Let down? I dunno, I’m sure there’s a nice word for it.
Apparently Elam was a drug and alcohol counsellor, with basic accreditation, so he knows squat about counselling.
Also, being supportive of someone in comments is bloody hardly “offering services”. Is that what they think – their keyboard activism of vileness on AVfM is “offering services”?
I had to stop talking to one person who I only knew by alias and who kept attempting, it was driving me nuts…they’re still lurching along so apparently I wasn’t needed anyway.
I don’t want to fuck it up, I REALLY don’t want to fuck it up but I’d rather try than sit on my hands if it’s right in front of me…
Not that that’s a judgment of anyone else for doing something different! Not at all.
…It’s really hard to stop a train at the bottom of a mountain when it lost its’ brakes at the top, yanno?
Sometimes no matter what you do you aren’t going to stop the person from attempting. Or succeeding. Which is just gut-wrenching.
“I can’t say I understand the pushback Ally got. Was it just the because she lumped all men in together?”
Interestingly, it seemed to me that the women on this blog seemed more upset at her than we men were. I took it that she’d had bad experiences with men, and I didn’t take it personally. I thought that some pushback was useful and that it was better that it come from the women, but I felt people could have been a bit gentler in their pushback.
Even if the policy is going to be not to help why does it have to be a rote message? At that point they might as well be pasting I NO CUR instead of the clumsy boilerplate they chose.
It was one of those things where something isn’t a huge deal, so most people don’t say anything, but once one person steps up and says something everyone else wants to chime in.
For these sorts of things, it goes really quickly from no comment to dog-pile.
Young master grump, however, is on the autism spectrum. Should I be thanking my lucky stars that Prof. Dawkins hasn’t yet magically produced a fool-proof test for that, and urged everyone to pre-screen their pregnancies?
Oh, but people with autism can contribute to society. The Lord High Arsehole Full Of Compacted Shit said so.
Ditto, and because scrotosphere is something we coined here specifically about the MRM. It mocks the term manosphere and has never meant anything else. It’s not a general term; it doesn’t even come up on Google.
Can you not please generalise about everyone piling in?
Kinda telling that they recognized their environment was so toxic they didn’t want anyone even engaging with a potentially suicidal person.
You know, because they all care so much that they don’t bother to educate themselves on how to interact with someone. Or their empathy is so broken they can’t handle the basics of offering support.
Wasn’t a big deal TO YOU, you meant to say. Us silly ladies, always chiming in when no one wants to hear it.
I’m sorry, Pallygirl, but I thought there was a bit of piling on there. When she said “men are fucking terrifying” I thought she was trying to describe her emotional reaction rather than stating a fact. Maybe she should have said “I find men fucking terrifying,” but that’s a nit-pick. I also think the subject of the thread itself — this obviously brutal guy — might be a bit triggering for someone who has been a victim of abuse. I thought it would have been better to give her a bit of a pass on that comment.
You know, one of my exes (the stalker) was actually diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder. Dude was scary. I still manage not to suggest that he’s the norm.
As I’ve noted before, he’d have been working in a field where there would be a lot of women, because mental health/psychology tends to draw a lot of women.
A lot of those women would have Bachelor’s and Master’s and PhD’s in relevant fields.
This leads me to speculate that women were regularly pulling rank and showing him up at work, because, well, the women actually knew what they were doing.
Unlike Elam.
So maybe AVfM’s running on his canned butthurt from back then. Just saying.
kirbywarp- Ya got me. I am afraid I don’t know what the other joke would have been. You’re gonna have to tell me because my dumb brain can’t figure it out. 😛
(As in, once tried to hang his younger brother just to see if people really do turn blue in the face when they can’t breathe scary. Which of course I wasn’t told until well into the relationship. Anyway, I still wouldn’t suggest that trying to hang your siblings is common male behavior, and I’d expect people to side-eye me if I did.)
I find the concept of Elam EVER being a counselor anywhere to be downright terrifying.