Yesterday, A Voice for Men published an article so extreme, so hateful, so beyond the pale, that even Paul Elam, the site’s founder, was taken aback by it. Elam, who said he hadn’t read the article before other editors on the site posted it, claimed in a comment that when he finally did read it, it made him literally sick to his stomach.
Today, he took the extraordinary step – for AVFM – of taking down the article and offering an apology for publishing a piece so “counter to every aspect of our mission and values.” (It’s still up, for the time being, in Google cache; the original can also be found here.)
So what did this terrible, terrible article say? Brace yourself.
It said that Emma Watson’s recent United Nations speech on feminism … made some good points.
While the author of the piece, a tech dude turned “dating expert” named Jeb Kinnison, took the standard MRA swipes at the alleged evils of third-wave feminism, he argued that Watson’s version of feminism represented a kind of “equity feminism which is equally concerned with men’s rights.”
Then he described Watson as “very, very smart, and wise beyond her years … .”
I know, I know. Horrifying.
But that wasn’t even the worst part of Kinnison’s piece. In his conclusion, he actually suggested that
The smart and civilized aren’t spending their time nursing grievances based on sex, gender, race, or religion. If only the most intelligent voices were as amplified as the voices of ignorance and hate promoted by the grievance-mongering misandrists of third-wave feminism as well as insecure male misogynists.
Yes, that’s right: An article in AVFM actually acknowledged that some of those in the Men’s Rights ranks might actually be – gasp! – misogynists.
Naturally, such heresy could not stand. In the comments, a fight broke out between those who hated the article, and those who also hated it but felt that criticizing AVFM about anything was terrible and counterproductive and, hey, remember to donate to AVFM during the Fall Fundraiser!
In the former camp, the most outspoken critic was Nick Reading of Men’s Rights Edmonton, posting under the alias Eric Tiberius Duckman, who bluntly warned that
This article is disgraceful. If uncle Jeb here imparts any more of his mangina wisdom on AVFM, I’ll be seriously considering pulling my support and encouraging others to do likewise.
Elam was having none of this – very poor taste, especially during AVFM’s Fall Fundraiser! He responded to Reading’s threats to take his ball and go home with an indignant comment defending the editors who ran Kinnison’s piece and tearing into prodigal Nick:
[O]ur editors did their job and I am 100% supportive of that.
To be even more frank, even less appealing to me than this article is tantrums and ultimatums from readers attempting to exert editorial control by threatening to leave if they see content they don’t like.
Then apparently Elam decided that he didn’t support the editors 100% after all. In another comment, he declared that
This is the most overly generous, myopic interpretation of Watson’s speech I have seen, including feminist websites. It is literally embarrassing in its reductionist dismissal of issues unique to men and boys. …
I could write an entire article on what is wrong with this piece, but I am just too busy right now.
Throwing up.
Once he finished up with this, he took the piece down.
And AVFM’s Fall Fundraiser was saved!
That’s the sort of name Charles Dickens would give a villain if he were alive today.
@Jeb Kinnison: Please, dude, just stop trying to draw a comparison between MRAs and feminists. This blog deals with extreme expressions of misogyny, a considerable lot of them originating from AVFM. There is no similar blog dealing with alleged misandry, because
a) you’d be hard-pressed to find feminists making as terrible claims as MRAs do (unless you interpret things in ludicrous conspiracy ways, or in pointless fundie terms such as “destroying traditional values” etc.), and
b) misandry is not actually a thing that’s happening. Women calling men out on privileged bullshit is in no way equivalent to the very real issue of institutional misogyny that affects social, economical and political aspects of society and puts women at a disadvantage.
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Thanks, bunnybunny, for posting that link. I felt there was something off about several of the points Watson brought up, and this post highlights them in a way I could not pinpoint. Most importantly: this is not about men. I can attest that nobody becomes an ally because they’re primarily interested in how a certain injustice affects them personally. Such an ally would not be a very good ally to have. It doesn’t really work that way.
I mean, I get Watson’s point – that gender issues are a problem that men need to acknowledge as well – but there are more than a few problematic points in the speech. Personally, I side-eyed the claim that “[m]en don’t have the benefit of equality, either”, since that paints an awfully equal picture of society, something that is plainly untrue. If men didn’t benefit from gender inequality, there would be little reason for it to exist.
Don’t get me wrong, Watson’s awesome, but seriously now. Men aren’t going to go to pieces if you point out that they’re the primary benefactors of a patriarchal system. The ones who start whining about “man-hating feminazis” are not the ones you’d like to have in your company in the first place.
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Oh, and count me in with the people who fell for David’s well-planned surprise twist. For a fleeting, hopeful moment, I imagined Paul “fucking their shit up gives me an erection and also they’re damn near demanding to be raped” Elam being disgusted by misogyny of some nigh-eldritch proportions.
Shows what I know.
Shut up, Woody.
@ Tabby
*waves from the North side*
I actually moved out of Duckman’s riding this spring.
Heh…not that I am for “equity feminism” but I took the original article as a good sign; maybe AVFM is being infiltrated by moderates? One can dream.
Quoth the Eternal Leader of AVfM:
Gee, Paul, that “threatening to leave” business, that’s almost like a… boycott! You know, a move that many activists take when they are doing activism. I know that you have no idea what that looks like, and of course you wouldn’t expect it from your own flock, and they are being activist about your awful website, but this is still more activist than anything you do, which is to write misogynist rants and take people’s money.
“Altch: your condescension is duly noted. The microaggressive term “dear” is especially precious.”
Says the dudebro who unapologetically misspells a name…
Anyway, since we have a real life MRA,I am going to let y’all in on my daily act of misandry. Random white dude on Twitter told me I’m not a real feminist, so I’m going bra shopping without a flamethrower. Also, when he started whining about how all his exes “falsely” charged him with rape, I blocked him. Blocking dudebros on Twitter is MISANDRY!
I assume “all of my exes falsely accused me of rape” = “I am a rapist”.
If you keep doing this well with your daily acts of misandry, the FemBorg will up your quota.
David, you raised my hopes of Elam meeting some of the garbage his folks spew and having a massive epiphany of epic proportions…
… and then such disappointment mixed with “I really should have guessed”.
AVFM, you know why moderates don’t agree with you? Hint: maybe because of these shenanigans.
Emmy, so do I.
And, does tweeting #feministfacts count? Because if it does I’m meeting it.
I…for a good few seconds I had hope that there was something Paul Elam found too hateful and violent. Now I’m kind of sad. 🙁
Shut up, Woody.
Jeb: you’re so close to an epiphany, dude. Soooooo close.
In a way Elam’s a victim of circumstance (I use the word victim here very loosely) – he’s made his entire career out of being the most woman-hating of the woman-haters, and the fact his commentariat keeps catching up to him forces him to get steadily worse and worse to remain the top dog.
The fact that someone can’t even point out that there are woman-haters on the anti-feminist side without being vilified at AVfM pretty much proves what we’ve been saying about ’em all along – they’re willing to sacrifice pretty much any other principle if it means they can blame a woman for something, and they indulge in exact the echo-chamber ideological purging they accuse feminists of.
Hey, remember that brief, amusing two weeks earlier this year when Paul Elam tried to rein in the worst of his followers’ behaviours because they’d be getting press attention surrounding the conference? It’s pretty telling that even the blandest, even-handed coverage was lambasted by Elam for its supposed anti-man bias, and that’s when the media awas seeing AVfM on its best behaviour.
I understand the tone of Watson’s speech. She’s trying to reach out to the uncooperative, and it’s hard to not make even the tiniest bit of compromise just for the hope that your message will get through.
Speaking of cookies… There’s a Reddit story about how a “feminist” parent supposedly baked vagina cookies for *2nd graders* and then flipped out on the teacher for not serving them. I’m calling bullshit. It’s so ridiculous. What’s sad is that the story is making rounds as if it really happened. http://www.donotlink.com/bsw1
Totally true, I saw it on “Death to Smoochy”.
No…wait…those were penis cookies.
Well, in Whineville they say – that the Elam’s small heart grew three sizes that day… And then it deflated and turned once again into an empty dark hole.
You had me for minute there, David.
I’m just taken aback at Elam feeling the need to *apologize* for mealy-mouthed article that offers women some bare-minimum human decency while still disingeniiously blaming feminsts for the woes of men. I mean, if anyone should be apologizing it’s Jeb for talking out of both sides of his mouth, but Elam’s reaction is just astonishing. “I’m sorry we published an article by someone who doesn’t hate women enough. We here at A Voice For Monsters Men strive to only bring you the most hateful sexist screeds on the internet.”
I swear I saw recently in “Cosmopolitan” (I was in a waiting room at the time) the sex advice “Send his penis a formal invitation,” and since then that is all I can think of when I see “formal invitation”. I do not know how one would address such a thing: “Mr. Happy, North Pants, Denver”, nor do I know how a penis would open it – paper cuts! Apart from these quibbles I am sure this advice is as good and reliable as everything else in “Cosmo”.
I’m hit-and-run posting today, so sorry if this is too off topic even for this place, but it seems important to announce to you all that FEMINISM IS OVER. It has been utterly destroyed. This has been the engine of its destruction.
It has been nice knowing you all, but I think we all know when we’ve been beaten. Who knew that all it took to annihilate us was a bunch of images, unsupported assertions, and URLs? None of those was enough on its own, but if you combine them into one big rancid tumblr post (using the feminazis’ own SJW weapon against them!) it is overpowering.
Feeeeemales, hand over your bon bons. Manginas, hand over your … sex that you’re not getting from the feeeemales.
It’s over.
They won’t get my bonbons.
Even if we take the whole “there are feminist/social-justice groups who will instantly eject anyone at the first sign of a heretical thought!” thing at face value, I’ve never understood how “sometimes, some groups of people can be a bit mean and circlejerky” logically leads to the conclusion “therefore, any political beliefs they hold are obviously false”. If I take, idk, a class on string theory and the teacher is kind of an asshole, does that mean the whole concept of string theory is wrong and false and bad?
@Jeb: that’s not what ‘microaggression’ means. You may be thinking of condescension, or passive-aggression.
SURRENDER YOUR BON BONS! THEY’VE FOUND THIS IMAGE:
AND THIS PROVES SOMETHING TOO!
http://38.media.tumblr.com/2eb9768d31fe65ccc495370133919e74/tumblr_n9ju564jJ31tb1gaqo1_500.png
That was really sad.
They’re still not getting my bonbons.
AND THIS THING WAS MADE UP BY 4CHAN BUT STILL PROVES SOMETHING ABOUT FEMINISM BECAUSE REASONS:
http://ectoplasmrainbow.tumblr.com/post/88669763984/colorsofsocialjustice-rtrixie-d1reese
AND FINALLY … THIS:
