November 25th is White Ribbon Day in Australia, a day devoted to ending domestic violence against women. This year – the 25th has already drawn to a close in Australia – there were reportedly hundreds of White Ribbon events held across the country, including a massive march in suburban Sydney that drew thousands of participants.
White Ribbon Australia, which describes itself as “Australia’s only national, male led Campaign to end men’s violence against women” calls on men to “swear never to commit, excuse or remain silent about violence against women.” It helps to coordinate events in schools and workplaces, and has gotten support from police departments across the country as well as from various branches of the nation’s military.
It’s also gotten the attention of the folks at A Voice for Men.
Not that long ago, as you may recall, everyone’s favorite Men’s Rights hate site set up its own phony White Ribbon website in an attempt to push its own noxious views on domestic violence, undermine real White Ribbon organizations worldwide – and to do a bit of fundraising of its own. (AVFM, perhaps fearing legal reprisal, has since taken down the “donate” button it used to have on the site.)
Now AVFM has decided to take White Ribbon Australia on directly, declaring November 25th to be “White Ribbon Fraud Day.” That’s right: the group that just set up a fake White Ribbon website is accusing the real domestic violence awareness group of fraud.
AVFM’s head boy Paul Elam declares in his typically overheated prose that
Profiteers have now industrialized battered women, reducing them to storefront mannequins for the sake of lining their pockets. …
One of the most deplorable examples of that in existence today is the so-called “White Ribbon Campaign.” … Their modus operandi is to paint a false picture of the problem, identifying its sole source as abusive men and its sole victims as helpless women. It is a calculated deception that flies in the face of virtually all known credible research on the issue, but it is a financial windfall because female-only victims and male-only perpetrators have proven to provide the best incentive for inspiring well-meaning people to give money.
Perhaps the worst of the worst in this worldwide consortium of con artists is the White Ribbon Campaign in Australia.
Never mind the actual domestic violence survivors (not mannequins) who show up and speak out at White Ribbon Day events. Never mind that Elam’s notion of “credible research” on the subject of domestic violence is considered by most DV experts as seriously flawed.
And never mind that Elam himself seems to think that the best “solution” to domestic violence perpetrated by women against men is for men
to beat the living shit out of them. I don’t mean subdue them, or deliver an open handed pop on the face to get them to settle down. I mean literally to grab them by the hair and smack their face against the wall till the smugness of beating on someone because you know they won’t fight back drains from their nose with a few million red corpuscles.
And then make them clean up the mess.
This isn’t the only time that the truculent Elam has fantasized publicly about beating up women.
So the idea that Elam is some sort of moral authority on the issue of domestic violence is laughable.
But let’s hear him out anyway.
Elam’s “smoking gun” against White Ribbon Australia? That after a cursory examination of the group’s publicly available financial records
we have found no evidence that White Ribbon Australia has ever contributed a solid nickel to a single service for actual victims of domestic violence. That includes female victims.
Well, Paul, that’s probably because THAT’S NOT WHAT WHITE RIBBON AUSTRALIA DOES. There are numerous groups in Australia that do provide direct support to victims of domestic violence; White Ribbon Australia links to many of them on its website.
But, as the group makes plain on its website, it doesn’t provide direct assistance. Instead, it “work[s] to change the attitudes and behaviours that lead to violence against women.”
What does this mean? Well, in addition to White Ribbon Day events (and other events held throughout the year), the group organizes programs in schools and workplaces, recruits and works with corporate partners, and trains Advocates and Amabassadors to speak out against violence against women.
The efforts of White Ribbon Australia and other DV organizations to raise awareness are bearing fruit; indeed, the Australian government earlier this year pledged $100 million to step up the fight against domestic violence.
A Voice for Men, meanwhile, has set up a phony website to undermine these efforts.
I think it’s pretty clear who the real fraud is here.
We don’t do death wishing here. Nor do we diagnose mental illnesses (like “sociopath”). Paul Elam is a liar and has horrible ideals and that is already bad enough.
wishing someone dead is not ok,not even when you’re talking about a stain like elam
Disappointing. The White Ribbon people here in Australia do such a wonderful job. And it’s so disingenuous to accuse them of fraud. They’re working to end *men’s* violence against *women*, not all domestic or intimate partner violence.
In a country that has less than ten percent the population of the U.S., one woman a week dies at the hands of a current or former partner. Our own police chiefs think we have a toxic culture when it comes to attitudes to women.
So Elam can pedal his bullshit elsewhere. Take White Ribbon Australia to court or shut up.
ktrantingredhead:
Don’t do that.
I removed the offending comment. We don’t do that sort of thing here.
Oh, and Elam is his real name.
Yeah, no wishing death on anyone.
So, Elam sets up a phony site using the name and logo of an actual anti-domestic violence organization that is doing actual good work, and was asking for donations for his phony site, then calls the real White Ribbon Campaign “con artists?”
Okay. Well, I’m going to take a page out of Elam’s book: here I madethe real Mona Lisa. The one in the Louvre is a fake set up by con artists. Can I have money now?
@David
… You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
This is like the Flash villain Rainbow Raider being called Roy G. Bivolo, some people were simply born to be supervillains.
Agreed with marinerachel, wishing death on anyone (even as scummy as Elam) is how to lose the moral high ground.
Ironically, his own rage is a far more immediate threat to his health than any feminist will be. His levels of hate and constant state of anger is terrible for life expectancy.
I want Elam to live a long life filled with self-awareness. I expect that will render him fetal under his desk sucking his thumb for eternity.
ShutUpWoody.au, ShutUpWoody.ca, ShutUpWoody.ru
Hellkell, that image reminded me of post-death Voldemort in the last movie. Which would make us. . . Harry? We all want him to feel remorse, after all, and don’t really WANT him to spend eternity as a whimpering lump of agony.
Bingo. He’s also written basically a fanfiction where a poor innocent man is cruelly forced to go to anger counselling just because his mean old wife PROVOKED him into hitting her, and frames him as the victim. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that punching someone who has betrayed you and/or mocking you is not, in fact, a healthy or acceptable occurrence. Not to mention he’s talked in loving detail how if a woman less than half his size hit him, he’d hit her back hard and feel no remorse whatsoever (completely ignoring that most women would usually not start a physical altercation with a man that much bigger). Paul Elam is absolutely aching for an excuse to hit women.
i refuse to believe that elam has never acted on his violent tendencies
Canada too
http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/domestic-violence-industry/white-ribbon-canada-cashes-in-on-the-suffering-of-children/
not to forget shutupwoody.com.au and shutupwoody.org.au
I have to admit, I laughed a little when I realized that I didn’t realize Elam’s name was a emordnilap (a word that spells something different when spelt backwards, like desserts and stressed! The five-dollar word of the day, kids!) until someone pointed it out here either.”
On a more serious note, I have to side with PoM. If Elam is so very vocal about wanting to hit women, I don’t doubt that he’s never actually hit one. He throws up way too many red flags for me not to believe that.
*I don’t doubt that he has actually hit one.
: P Whoops.
@Sarity
Did you seriously just put ‘real’ in scarequotes? David’s already listed the ways White Ribbon contributes to the movement to end DV, complete with sources ready for the clicking. AVFM’s accusations of fraud are based solely on Paul Elam’s (probably deliberate) failure to comprehend anything in White Ribbon’s mission statement and on its frontpage, which is in no way equivalent to WR not helping people the way you seem to think it should.
If it weren’t for these Angry Opinion Articles, I wouldn’t be half so well informed about these issues as I am. Hell, some folks even have charitable donations worked into their budgets, and White Ribbon is a good place for those monies that might otherwise go to less actually helpful but better publicised organisations. I sure didn’t know White Ribbon was a thing until David started writing about it.
And that’s me delurked too, I suppose!
@deniseeliza Sociopathy is not considered a mental illness, and does not appear in the DSM. Thus, my comment is not a “diagnosis” but rather an observation of a pattern of traits and behaviours among individuals like Elam. (Observing the pattern can be useful in not only understanding the particular individual but also the reactions of their followers and believers.)
@Jenny:
My mean mom tried to provoke my father into hitting her many times. Her intent was then to call the cops and get him arrested. What did dad do? He restrained her if necessary and then walked away. Left the house. She would hurl invective at him as he left, calling him a coward.
It might be difficult at times, but it is possible to resist escalating to violence.
I was kinda hoping for some “he’s the imposter! ” “no, he is!” shenanigans, but instead it’s just another of Paulie’s attempts to redefine words. White Ribbon is only fraudulent if “fraud” now means “doing exactly what you said you would do”.
Shutupwoody.biz
Oh, what a load of mendacious DRIVEL. Erin Pizzey did not “found the women’s shelter movement worldwide”, as it pre-existed her and all of us by centuries in both Europe and Asia (where Catholic and Buddhist monasteries ran shelters for battered wives in medieval times, already.) She merely built one shelter, in the UK…and promptly turned her back on women thereafter. Worse, she now sucks up to men who can rightly be termed abusive, Paulie in particular being a case in point. She is no more an expert in DV than I am the fucking Queen of Sheba.
I kind of hope they BOTH get sued. It would be a great lesson for them in how NOT to do PR.
Yes, Paulie, and you would know, since you’re the biggest profiteer to abuse women on the Internet.
(Shut UP, Woody!)
ShutUpWoody.GOv, ShutupWood.ly, Woodystopbothering.us
fledgling NGOs usually find other groups working in the same space and work WITH them, but there is Paul going his own way.
My favorite part of Elam’s attempts to address domestic violence is that he not only recommends really extreme violence, he makes it clear that violence of the kind designed for daily intimidation – “open handed pop to the face to get her to settle down” – should, in his opinion, be a standard part of every relationship. Because that’s not domestic violence, nope, it’s, um, what are we calling that kind of thing these days?
At this point I’m pretty much convinced that the Facebook staff are more or less ideologically in line with Paulie and co, even if they’re smart enough not to say so in public. If you look at what they do and don’t censor a pretty clear pattern of woman-hating emerges.