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!
And the reviews are in!
“This is insanely good. It’s a long read but it’s totally worth it, i think it’s the best thing i ever read about feminism. I’m going to keep this one and share it as much as i can, because it’s well written, and it never goes into “free violence/free bashing” ; it always explain WHY, and it goes in the details. Thanks a lot for sharing this one!”
~BurritHawk
“I hope this becomes one of the sub’s top posts. More people should read this and see through the bullshit.”
~ProcrastinHater
“I cried reading this. Well done.”
~theclassicneil
“A single tear rolls down my cheek as I finish reading it, it was just so damn beautiful.”
~popwobbles
Seriously, I can’t tell if they were just masterfully trolled
Uh, I recognize 2 of those Twitter people in that #EndFatehrsDay thing as 4chan trolls,a nd probably most of the rest are as well. I think I literally proved in a post here that Phoebe Kwon was a troll, that her pic was a stock photo.
http://maplerag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/americacries1agc.jpg
Also, the way they’ve laid out NotAllWomen makes it look like NoTallWomen.
@cloudiah It, uh… proves that stupidstagram is probably more into girls than boys? Lesbians existing = misandry?
… what am I saying, not having sex with men is ALWAYS misandry. As is having sex with lots of men. Or having sex with some men and not others. Misandry everywhere.
I’d like to update my daily act of TMI misandry…today I had no sex.
That should be a tumblr
My 5 year old has started the daily act of misandry…she now counts male vs female characters in her TV shows (more male characters than female in Dora, for example) and movies. Since we’re now on my favourite topic, the daily act of misandry.
Someone just posted this dramatization of the response to that feminism-ending piece on r/amr:
MIDDAY, INTERIOR: FEMINISM WORLD HEADQUARTERS
We open on a dolly shot of BRIAN, a harried, unpaid beta-male
intern rushing down a dimly lit eco-friendly hallway. His arms are full
of a large wad of green and white dot-matrix printouts. The paper is
new-old-stock from a local carbon-neutral vintage paper store. Some
pages fall away as he runs.
After turning a corner and kowtowing to his female superior, he bursts
into a WORLD DOMINATION WARROOM.
BRIAN
It’s over. We’re finished.
A misandrously tall woman with fiendishly short hair is standing over
the center table. She turns to BRIAN as he enters. To the two women
seated at the table she smirks and says
ANDREA
Men.
All laugh, except BRIAN who is exasperatedly submissive.
BRIAN
They have finally done it. They’ve produced a counterargument so
airtight that we will never recover from it.
The women look at each other nervously. BRIAN unspools the paper wad
onto the table, flattening it with his feminine hands. He is not
allowed to lift, not even military press. SWOLE is forbidden here.
All scan the sheets, mumbling as they read. A woman in suit blurts out
LUCY
Oh my god.
ANDREA
LUCY, we’ve seen this innuendo and specious reasoning before. Look,
they even have that 4chan thing with the #EndFathersDay stuff.
LUCY points to a page below. ANDREA scans down one page and a
horrified look twists her face. She sees
ANDREA
JPEGs. They have JPEGs. And some have sentences underlined with
red MS paint lines.
ALL WORRIEDLY MURMURING
ANDREA depresses a button on her necklace. The lights dim and go red as a
klaxon sounds. A mass evacuation is initiated, many are killed fleeing
the as the self-destruction fire takes hold of the building.
DUSK, EXTERIOR: ANDREA, LUCY and the others are gathered on a
windswept hill overlooking the burning wreckage of the headquarters.
ANDREA
We feared this day, but have prepared for it.
She dons sunglasses.
ANDREA
Activate the embedded assets.
She shoulders a battle-worn AK-47.
ANDREA
The Gender Wars have begun.
CUT TO BLACK
HEAVY METAL MUSIC SWELLS
samantha:
How tempting it would be to say, “Carry on like that, fella, and that’s exactly what we’ll do to you.“
The Female:Male character ratio is misandrist.
Well done!
RE: cloudiah
What’s so frustrating about the ‘not oppressive’ argument is that… well, I’ve NEVER said I find street harassment oppressive. I find it frightening and go to elaborate lengths to avoid and defend myself against it (including Kid’s recent Goon Spray), and it’s harmful to me.
Shouldn’t that be enough? If large segments of the population are getting harassed on the street because of their demographics, shouldn’t we be CONCERNED?
But what do I know, obviously one Internet macro totally trumps my argument.
I think my favorite bit of the Giant List of Misandry is the Marilyn French “All Men are rapists” quote, for the usual reasons and because he cites it as “Marilyn French, Authoress”. Because clearly women can’t just be authors. That is only for men.
Also, here is a Giant List of Misogyny from r/TheRedPill I linked earlier, for comparison:
http://www.np.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/2hca1j/lots_of_quotes_about_women_to_prevent_relapses/
…I’m making this into a Twitter hashtag. (Not sure if tweets embed.)
http://twitter.com/gwenckatz/status/515670681330003968
http://twitter.com/gwenckatz/status/515670741799280640
http://twitter.com/gwenckatz/status/515670950218452993
That Jeb dude said:
Aw, crap, I fed the blockquote mammoth…
blahlistic, that just makes it harder to hunt, right?
Street harassment is very oppressive in some communities. Many women do not dare leave their homes unescorted for fear of assault. Here in the US we drive more htan should be necessary because of street harassment.
You got me too, David. For a moment I thought that 1.) Elam seemed to have a little bit of human decency after all, and 2.) This was going to be something once-thought-IMPOSSIBLY horrible. I even had brain bleach ready for it.
But alas.
Oh well, I still want to share the brain bleach anyway. Here.
Ahh, cloudiah. I should have known for the past fifty-odd years that we feeeemales and our puny little feeeemale minds were just too weak, and we are just too pointless, to win…NOT!
I read the below on the reddit you linked to:
I love the image. People who push against waves tend to, you know, drown.
I know, right? At the time, though, I had a hard time just keeping a straight face. After he left, I did laugh myself sick. When I told Z about it, she laughed and waved her hands in the air, saying a few booga-booga’s.
BTW – he did call the following week and try to explain to me why he was right in feeling the way he did. He did, however, feel that he had yelled a bit too much.
On the serious side, it did make me think about how frightened so many men really are by women, especially women who get together…without a man to keep us in line…
Samantha – goes back to the old thing, doesn’t it: they’re afraid we’ll treat them the way they treat us.
“Do you want some veiled racism to go with this denial?”
Well said, kittehserf. Of course, it does beg the question – why do they not treat us the way they would like us to treat them? Their fear would then be gone.
Ledasmom: 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
Some men are gifted in the trouser department, some are very gifted, and then there’s the very few of us that are down right prehensile…
But we don’t like to brag.