So that was A Voice for Men founder Paul Elam’s response to a recent post of mine talking about Christopher Cantwell, an AVFM contributor who also likes to tell people to kill themselves.
In an AVFM post also titled David Futrelle: Please kill yourself, Elam waxed eloquent upon this theme:
David, please go kill yourself.
You should, however, before you slip away into the dark void that resembles your capacity for logic, consider that you may want to get out more. A lot more, actually.
“Please kill yourself,” in the context of Twitter and a lot of other internet exchanges is par for the course.
That is sadly true, Paul. I see that as a problem; you apparently see it as an excuse for the harassment and abuse you and your followers so enjoy heaping upon your opponents in the name of “Men’s Human Rights.”
Apparently, in Elam’s world, the best way to fight male suicide is by telling other men to kill themselves.
Oh, but one of Elam’s fans has an answer to that, too:
Human rights advocates at work!
A Voice for Men ISN’T a voice for men. It’s a voice for boors, misogynists, bores and idiots. They don’t have “compassion for men and boys”, they have compassion for NO ONE. Any small move in the direction of justice and equality, they interpret as an existential threat. Ludicrously, because no one questions their right to exist. It’s their privilege of being boors, misogynists, bores and idiots, uncalled-out and with complete impunity, that’s being questioned. And anyone who does that, gets pressured to kill themselves.
There is this ipad game called ‘dumb ways to die’ I thought the song was pretty funny except most of it was pretty brutal and not so funny including the game itself
Despite that, I would never tell someone to go kill themselves.
Suicide is very serious and I can’t understand the hyprocrisy of Elam.
Here’s some brain bleach
http://youtu.be/XKcAPS7LUEU
@Maudell – Well most of his clients. Which is what he thought of the people he was helping probably did end up killing themselves. Thinning the Herd is how Elam probably framed it.
It’s funny because these guys have no conception of what life in some sort of post apocalyptic world might be like. They really seem to think that societal norms are the invention of modern government and only enforced by them.
They watch movies and TV shows that take place apocalyptic settings and think that’s how it will be. An every man for himself Galtian paradise in which real manly men make their own rules. It never occurs to them that dystopian and apocalyptic fiction (if it’s good anyway) is actually meant to make statements about the state of our own current culture, it’s not a predictor of what would happen in real life. They don’t understand that humans are social creatures and that every time a group of people live in proximity with each other, norms develop and are enforced.
Historically, in times of great scarcity humans become more communal. In a real post apocalyptic world, there would probably be some chaos in the short term, but in the long term a society would evolve that is an MRA nightmare scenario. When it’s necessary to band together to survive, the concept of private property and individualism goes out the window.
Okay, that was a longer rant than I meant it to be. Apologies.
They’re such hypocrites aren’t they? Feminists are evil because we hurt feelings and make boners sad by not conforming to the expectation that we provide sex and sammiches on demand. Jessica Valenti is pretty much the devil incarnate for that tweet about bathing in male tears because it supposedly mocks the suffering of men. Feminists are bad for focusing on women because it supposedly ignores the suffering of men. Men are supposedly oppressed for their higher suicide rate. Yet telling men to kill themselves and telling them they aren’t “real males” because they don’t conform to some narrow expectation of what a man should be? A-OK!
Is it just me, or does that pic make Pauly look like he’s got his teeth sticking out over his lower lip?
N’thing all the comments here about what a walking refuse heap Elam is, and if that’s what a “real man” is like, no thanks, I’ll take the fake men who’re actually decent human beings.
@Elektra
Wow. I greatly appreciate your openness and honesty there, and I’m genuinely sorry to hear that you were put through something like that. I’ve been harassed recently to, but nowhere near that level, and I don’t think any of the people that I feel were treating me poorly would have ever been as cruel.
I’m glad to know that you pulled yourself back, and I truly hope that you’re in a better place now, away from people that would try to hurt you like that.
That’s just such a stark reminder for me as to why I feel that’s an inappropriate kind of “joke” to make, and why I literally wince when I remember how many times I made it. I think, personally, that I’ve been depressed for so long that I just thought it was okay? But that sounds now like saying “Oh I can say that word, I have a black/gay/whatever friend.” It’s a cop-out. It’s a cheap dodge that I don’t want to take.
I don’t think that I ever truly hurt anyone with what I said, but I can’t really know for sure. I know what I feel though, and I know that I’ve come far too close to the point of doing something I can’t undo more times than I’m comfortable with. And I know, right now, how I feel like I would react if someone were to say the same things I did, and it doesn’t make me feel good.
They say there’s a golden rule of comedy, and it’s never punch down. Never joke at the expense of those below you on the proverbial food chain, never make that the punchline. That’s exactly what I was doing, by making jokes like that so frequently. I stopped doing that a long time ago, but I feel like I should own up to it, admit how wrong I was, and stress how inappropriate and cruel that kind of casual indifference and callousness really is.
What you’ve described, I can only apologize again, for my own personal thoughtlessness. I hope, very deeply, that I never hurt anyone in the same way. It’s easy for me to say that I never meant anything by it, but knowing how it can really affect people (And I’ve been set off by much lesser statements than that) is a different thing altogether.
No one should be treated like that. No one at all should be told they should die. No one should be made to feel like they should take their own life. It doesn’t matter if a person is a man or a woman, suicidal or well adjusted, that’s not appropriate, and I’ve made a conscious decision to never use that as a weapon again.
He does look like he’s sucking in his lower lip, now that you mention it. Also for some reason that photo makes me think it should be advertising a dental practice, or maybe a real estate agent. It’s very ye olde business card.
@Lea
You’re right, everybody is really a work in progress. I think what separates good people from the sort that usually get lambasted on this blog, though, is the ability to admit when you’re wrong, and change.
I’m not going to clutch at my pearls and spend all my days hemming and hawing about this, but I’m going to admit that I was wrong and make the effort to just be better in the wake of that.
And it doesn’t sound like you’re a thoughtless person at all, because you’re thinking about things like this.
Do remarks like this accomplish or affect anything?
https://twitter.com/fangbreaker/status/533433549085356033
Is your plan to reduce chemical dependence by offering yourself as a replacement for Ambien?
Jeez, ladies, if you’d just shut up and never talk about problems, people would like you better.
“Guys! You don’t have to have teeth like this! Get invisible braces fitted now!”
Yes because online polls are such a good way of getting accurate population estimates. That’s why governments always decide policy on the basis of random online polls.
How do you report a hate account on Twitter?
Found out how everything was related. In completely unsurprising news, 4chan is behind “feminist” leading the banned word poll. Because it’s really about ethics in shirt journalism.
But of course, responsibility for inclusion of “feminist” on the list at all rests solely with Time.
Wonder what would have happened if they had included gamergate in the list.
JOURNALISTIC CORRUPTION FREE SPEECH BOYCOTT TIME SJWS CONTROL THE MEDIA OPERATION IMPUDENT CURTSY FLAMES WILL NEVER DIE!!!
Something like that, probably.
I’m sure that eventually Elam will use his standardized ‘satire’ defence. Cuz that always works.
I followed the link to the Rawstory article, from which I followed the link to the Elam piece here awhile back about Elam admitting he was using some of the AVfM donations for living expenses. He said he was supported by donations and a “generous partner”, which David translated to mean girlfriend. That was the only reference I could find anywhere to Elam even having a wife or partner. Does he say somewhere else that this partner is a woman?
I’m not saying he is gay. In fact, I find it hard to understand how he could hate women so intensely without being attracted to and feeling rejected by them. I’m just confused about how partner automatically means female if he hasn’t said so somewhere else.
Paul “male suicide is the single biggest tragedy ever” Elam tells men to kill themselves on the Internet. Oh wait, people only count as “men” when it suits him, so no hypocrisy necessary thanks to double-think.
Oh, but it’s only “satire” when Elam is an unspeakable douche-bag. Or maybe he thinks he’s being “edgy” like Bill Hicks (not that I ever found that particular part of his set to be that funny).
This guy should never have been a counselor. Or an advocate for “rights” of any kind. Or allowed anywhere near the internet. What a steaming turd.
I wish you well, David.
Not that I think those MRA shit-heels bother you, but we’ve got to counter-act the online vileness somehow. Let’s all be aggressively kind to one another. <3
This is an excellent idea.
I LOVE YOU SO MUCH U GUIZE! ROOOOAAAR!!!
http://s874.photobucket.com/user/wj_emm/media/hug_zps278d29c3.jpg.html
(But not for Paul Elam. A lego awaits you sir.)
I’m am offering VERY AGGRESSIVE HUGS on this fine Saturday morning.
Keep up the good work David. You are clearly getting under that persons skin.
Hopefully some dudebros can be saved from that…eh…whatever that human rights champion calls himself.