Paul Elam, the maximum leader of hate site A Voice for Men, has responded to the first wave of media coverage of his phony White Ribbon site with a truculent little rant.
Salon.com, Thinkprogress.org and the ever intellectually flatulent David Futrelle have rage-written on this issue barely 24 hours after we launched the site.
How does he know about the flatulence? In my defense, I’m still recovering from Dollar Taco Tuesday.
I was also just interviewed by Cosmopolitan Magazine, being asked such incisive questions as, “Do you think it is ever OK to hit a woman?”
I imagine that Cosmo was just trying to get a reaction from him, since it’s fairly well-known, at least among those who follow the Men’s Rights set, that Elam’s answer to the hitting women question is yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Indeed, Elam can barely restrain himself on the subject, having penned a short story, an allegedly “satirical” post and a serious, non-satirical post all laying out his case for punching women, and not only in self-defense.
Elam pauses his rant for a moment to make the whimsical assertion that his phony WhiteRibbon.org site is an “attempt to insert empiricism and genuine expertise into the discussion of violence in the home” before setting forth what he calls “a few facts” that he thinks will answer all questions.
One, White Ribbon Campaign is not trademarked by anyone. Deal with it.
Sorry, Paul. I don’t think this is the get out of jail card you think it is. The real White Ribbon campaign could assert common law trademark rights. It’s been around since 1991.
His other facts are kind of boring, so let’s just move on to the heart of the tantrum:
I have a message for Salon, ThinkProgress, Futrelle and anyone else bashing us for presenting valid research on a very real social problem. It is a message I will not use to sully the pages of WhiteRibbon.org.
This message is this: Go right straight to Hell you gang of bigoted, lying scumbags. That is, if Hell will even have you pieces of shit. …
That’s it. Write motherfuckers. Whine. Complain. Cry in your fucking Cheerios. The only thing you will ever accomplish is helping us spread the truth.
U mad bro?
I think he’s mad.
Oh, and one last thing. Send your lawyers. We will be happy to ride them for a while just for the fun of watching you pay the fucking bill.
Uh, who exactly are you talking to here? I’m pretty sure that neither I nor Salon nor ThinkProgress will be sending any lawyers. Someone else might, though. I guess we’ll have to see how that works out.
P.S. And while we’re talking about the spiteful immaturity of AVFMers, here’s an AVFM post from the YouTuber blabber “Mad Shangi” in which he actually boasts about acting like an obtuse diskhead in an, er, “debate” with me on Twitter.
More proof that it’s pointless to actually try to discuss anything with people who are either terminally thickheaded, or posting in bad faith, or, as seems to be the case with Mr. Shangi, a bit of both.
@Puddleglum: the bigger irony is the phrasing “possibility of real solutions”. They’re not actually trying to sell themselves as offering solutions, merely the possibility of solutions. So by their own admission, their “campaign that relies on solid, proven information”* isn’t worth jack shit.
Just like casinos offer the possibility of winning millions, the only proven outcome from this new website is that Paul will get even more money.
* YMMV with respect to definitions of “campaign”, “solid”, “proven”, and “information”.
/sigh and stuffed up the emphasis.
@pallygirl, yup. But the majority of those taken in by his lies are the folks who already agree with him, so I’m not going to cry over their misspent money. Like, I’m sure Woody has already ponied up. Again.
re: medlers – here in Norfolk they used to be called ‘open arses’ in fine Shakespearean fashion. I was talking to an older chap at the Apple Day last Sunday and he told me he grew up calling them ‘cat’s bums’.
You have to wait for them to rot before you can eat them. There was a 17th century joke about a romantic gift of medlars delivered with the message ‘my master sends you a basket of open arses. If you do not keep them till they be rotten as a turd they be not worth a fart.”
Those winter evenings used to just fly past.
Paul Elam is certainly raising awareness of domestic violence, but in a “how-to”, instructional sense.
50/50, as in 50% of the money goes to Paul Elam, and 50%… also goes to Paul Elam.
I’m going off the board here: I don’t think “masculism” *is* “bad for everyone.”
Well, that’s not really true. In the sense that “masculism” or “masculinism” is used today—-to describe a gender-based ideology in binary opposition to feminism, one that advocates male superiority or dominance—-yeah, that’s a big steaming pile.
A quarter-century ago I was the guy in my lit classes looking to apply feminist theory from a men’s perspective; at the time there was precious little such work being done. Today it seems like everything associated with men’s issues or men’s studies is tainted by the MRM, and that’s a crying fucking shame.
One tattered, dog-eared copy of Iron John or The Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart or Michael Meade’s Men and the Water of Life has more inherent value than the total sum of intellectual by-product created by the reactionary MRM, and it’s truly saddening that the typical MRA would call the mythopoetic Men’s Movement a bunch of beta bullshit. I know we frown on armchair diagnoses, but I’m not pointing at a specific individual: it just seems clear to me that some kind of abscess of the soul is the proper explanation for holding women in utter contempt and violent disdain. Why is there no shred of nobility to be found at Return of Kings? I’d posit it’s because the majority of its participants suffer psychological and spiritual wounds that have festered…but it takes some degree of self-awareness and responsibility to look within instead Other-izing roughly half the human race.
And that’s what’s really called for: some critical exploration of the root causes for the toxic masculinity the MRM seems to embrace.
http://www.quickmeme.com/img/28/283fb29c2eb488f80f4a82cd089aa76e252d9c66b47dcf496c28843a14293da6.jpg
@Falconer
Sorry, ended up not checking my email. The “if she’s already having sex” thing was my trying to be amusing about “her sex” being used as a euphemism for vagina. I think I failed.
Since everyone else here has already disproved that with ample evidence, I’m just gonna flick you away with my fingers.
Silly insect.
@Harlan
I can’t say I understand what you’re getting at.
Unless by this you mean “how to be a feminist man” I have no idea what you’re talking about here.
Masculism, no matter what the version number, always seems to have at its most basic foundation, “Men need to be different from women.” Whenever anyone promotes the idea that gender roles must exist and there must be a minimum of two of them, I have to ask Why. Why would it be terrible for men to be like women? Where is this idea coming from that men must not be like women, and how is that place different from misogyny?
It really creeps me out how Elam seems to have fans that talk about him as if he’s a god walking among us. “In his wisdom” “the benevolent leader” “the one true voice”
Ooohhhh…good challenge! What does he get if he wins?
Of course, it would be better if he lost, since he would actually learn something and , hopefully, grow.
Good points, Harlan, but the exploration that is so badly needed may be more difficult than we think. First of all, that toxic definition of masculinity goes back thousands of years and permeates almost all cultures on Earth. It is supported and nurtured by most religions, or at least by the interpretations of most of them. And the payoffs for men – political, religious and economic power, the deep-seated belief that men are the crowns of creation and that the planet and all life on it “belongs” to them, etc. – are powerful and hard to give up.
And, secondly, humanity has to acknowledge that there is a problem in the first place. We had better do that soon. Life, as we know it, may not be sustainable here for a whole lot longer and we cannot separate the physically damaging effects on the planet from the toxic attitudes so many have towards life, women and children.
Indeed! Wonderful questions. You can see this in the widely held attitudes that to say a woman thinks like a man is a compliment, but if you say that a man thinks like or in any way behaves like a woman, it is an emasculating insult.
I remember a debate I was in in high school. I was sixteen and we were debating some philosophical point or other and this guy came up to me afterwards. He congratulated me on my ability to think and argue a point “like a man.” I asked him what he meant by that and he said something about logic and clear speaking. I scatched my head over that one for a long time and finally decided he was a jerk. But he thought it was a compliment. After all, who wants to be told s/he thinks like a woman?!?!?
A guy I knew who fought it Vietnam told me that men from one side would insult men from the other side by calling them women…saying that they were being womanish in their fighting. And he said it was really demoralizing!
On how calling men/boys women/girls/feminine is a long standing insult:
I’ve been watching a lot of kids’ movies recently. It starts early. Ice Age, Emperor’s New Groove, and Wreck It Ralph all use “ladies” as an insult to a group of males (tigers, a man, & a squad of men, respectively)
Today in toxic masculinity, a boy angry about either a girl or about being suspended from the football team for beating up another kid (or maybe both) shoots up his school.
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2024866104_marysvillepilchuckxml.html
@PoM
And #Gaters are already flooding the anti-#GG side of Twitter with reasons why Anita is worse for pointing out said toxic masculinity than the shooter is for killing people.
@M. the Social Justice Ranger
The solution to problems is always to just stop talking about them. That makes them cease to be problems! (for those who are sufficiently privileged to not experience these things as problems)
I think the way that news story frames the question of why this dude did it kind of interesting. Given that he targeted three girls and two boys, and the two boys were both his cousins and therefore it’s very likely that he was choosing targets purposefully, the story nevertheless goes out of its way to posit the “suspended from the football team” theory. Because if there is another solution besides misogyny, we must grasp at it with both hands and never let it go, lest we all be forced to admit that misogyny is a thing that causes tragedies.
@samantha
Good points, Harlan, but the exploration that is so badly needed may be more difficult than we think.
I would never imagine it could be simple or easy. I’d also not suggest that difficulty somehow makes a thing not worth doing.
@Policy
We are all the same in that we’re human, but individuals are different from each other, cultural subsets are different from each other, men *are* different from women—and *not*, as well. No any one thing is *all* *only* one thing, and acknowledging differences does not imply superiority. Vive le différence! else what’s celebration of diversity for?
I would not ask the question “Why would it be terrible for men to be like women?” any more than I would ask the inverse—-“Why would it be terrible for women to be like men?”—unless I were proceeding from the prior supposition that there are characteristic differences between men and women *and* that one group’s characteristics were, as a whole, more desirable/positive than the other. That kind of supposition is, I think, spurious. Admirable traits, positive qualities: these things are not bound by gender roles. I’d certainly never claim any sort of superiority for myself based on the fact that my physiology includes testes and a phallus. I was brought up as a feminist, which is a huge factor in how I came around to my own investigations of the nature of masculinity.
@Harlan
Well, then I’m going to have to ask if you’d like to explain what “masculism” means in the context in which you are using it. Because that word has a common meaning that “men should act in a particular way which is different from how women act.” If all you want to say is “don’t be an asshole” you don’t need a gendered word for that. What is it about your concept that requires a gendered word?
I remember in elementary school (back during the 1960s), students had to line up in the hall before entering the classroom. Two lines, boys and girls. If a boy was acting up or out, the usual punishment was. . . standing in the girls’ line.
It was years before I realized just how effed up that was.
Oh, before I forget – Andrew Sullivan has weighed in on GamerGate. Apparently, he thinks misandry is a real thing. But he’s said ridiculous things before.
“Apparently, he thinks misandry is a real thing.”
Well, to be fair, it technically is – but like anti-white racism, it’s not systemic, not remotely common and overused to the point of destroying its own meaning, “Boy who cried wolf”-style, and that dumbass using #GG as a platform to drool that “Yes means yes” is misandry (what the fuck) sure as hell isn’t helping with that.
No, no, no. Killing someone (&/or trying to kill one or more people) is not a “mistake.”
http://news.yahoo.com/social-media-posts-reveal-washington-school-shooters-personal-struggles-220952462.html
“Yes means yes is misandry.”
/boggles