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Paul Elam, you're no MLK: A Voice for Men offers a $100 bounty for a clear photo of its latest feminist foe

Cartoon by Sage Gerard. aka "Victor Zen," AVFM's golen boy of campus activism
Cartoon by Sage Gerard, AVFM’s golden boy of campus activism

Today I’d like to share with you two quotations. One is from Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights leader whose legacy we honor today. The other is from someone who considers himself the leader of a human rights movement that follows in the footsteps of King.

The first quote:

Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

The second:

[Name redacted], I hope you are looking forward to our date. I certainly am. … [I]t is clear that you have gone to great lengths to keep your image off the internet.

Nice try.

Is that a threat? No, it is a promise. Big difference.

As we have been saying here for years, the time for collegial, polite discussion and negotiation with these piles of refuse is over. …

We have people working on securing her image. Meantime, $100.00 to the first person who gets us a clear image of her which we can verify. Something large and clear enough to be used as a feature image is preferred.

As you have probably gathered, the first quote comes from Dr. King. It’s from his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, in which he sets forth a powerful argument for the transformative power of nonviolence, which, as he notes, โ€œnonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.โ€

The second quote comes from Paul Elam of A Voice for Men. I’ve taken the liberty of redacting the name of his target.

Yes, this self-described โ€œhumanitarianโ€ is launching yet another campaign of doxxing and intimidation aimed at an ideological enemy who just happens to be female. And once again, as he so notoriously did several years ago, Elam is offering a bounty for the personal information of one of his targets โ€“ in this case a clear photograph of her face.

It’s a strategy that draws not on the tactics of Martin Luther King but on those of his enemies โ€“ in particular the Ku Klux Klan, which in the 1960s posted โ€œwanted postersโ€ featuring the faces of civil rights activists, including King himself. Some of those whose faces appeared on these โ€œwanted posters,โ€ most famously King himself, were later murdered.

In more recent years, anti-abortion activists have posted similar โ€œwanted postersโ€ featuring the pictures and addresses of doctors who perform abortions โ€“ some of whom were themselves later murdered.

Now AVFM has taken up this classic technique of intimidation.

Last year, AVFM activists โ€“ including the site’s โ€œactivism directorโ€ Attila Vinczer — posted hundreds of wanted-style posters of feminist philosophy professor Adele Mercier on and around the campus of Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario. The year before, a Men’s Rights group in Edmonton closely associated with A Voice for Men put up similar posters targeting Lise Gotell, the chair of womenโ€™s and gender studies at the University of Alberta.

We can only assume that Elam has a similar campaign in mind for his latest target.

So what are Elam’s charges against this new woman to hate?

According to him, the woman, a professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, accused AVFM activist Sage Gerard (aka Victor Zen) of โ€œdemonstrat[ing] a desireย toย kill womenโ€ in a complaint she filed with the KSU administration.

Elam has posted the complaint on his website. Her name appears nowhere in the complaint, nor does anything about Gerard wanting to kill women.

[ Clarification: Elam has now posted a separate campus police report about an incident in which Gerard came to the office of the Interdisciplinary Studies department requesting to see the professor; the police report contains her name as well as notes from the officer saying that “she has seen the cartoons, videos and blogs online and believes Gerard demonstrates having violent fantasies about hurting and murdering women.” ]

This anonymous complaint, along with another complaint about Gerard, were evidently triggered by a video Gerard posted last year of a late-night โ€œsticker runโ€ he made on the KSU campus.

The video, which Gerard filmed and narrated on the fly, is more than a little creepy. In it, Gerard describes his preparations for his โ€œactivismโ€ as if he were launching some sort of covert operation; at one point he talks about hiding his stickers in the sleeves of his jacket. As he heads out the door to start his stickering, he announces โ€œlet’s go fuck with people.โ€

Gerard clearly sees what he’s doing as a deliberately provocative act. He talks about putting AVFM stickers in places โ€œwhere they cannot be ignoredโ€ and about his desires to โ€œpush the boundariesโ€ by plastering them in places they’re really not supposed to be put โ€“ most notably in a women’s bathroom where, thankfully, no women were present.

Weirdly, given that he later posted the video on his YouTube channel, Gerard also took steps in the video to conceal his identity and cover his tracks, wiping his fingerprints off of some of the stickers after pasting them in a bathroom. Later, apparently wanting to look as much like a serial killer as possible, he dons latex gloves.

At one point, Gerard jokes about how he’d like to paste one of the stickers over the mouth of a feminist to shut her up.

His behavior in the video and in his interactions with others on campus, as well as his affiliation with AVFM, clearly rattled some on the KSU campus. The anonymous complainant to the KSU administration suggested that Gerard’s actions were creating a โ€œhostile work environmentโ€ for some faculty and staff and making students fear for their safety.

Elam has posted the actual complaints, which, in what seems to be a pretty clear violation of privacy, were sent to Gerard with the identity of one of the accusers laid bare. Here’s the anonymous complaint that Elam has attributed to his current target:

Among other similar offenses by the same individual, a KSU student (Sage Gerard) posed as a custodian and entered the womenโ€™s bathrooms on campus, placing stickers intended to intimidate women. โ€ฆ Gerardโ€™s behavior indicates contemplation of violence against women (he posts art depicting guns pointed at womenโ€™s symbols, as well as other violently anti-feminist themes). His behavior has created a hostile work environment for multiple KSU employees who do not only fear intimidation and harassment, but actual physical violence against themselves and their families. KSU students have also expressed real fears for their own physical safety on campus . . . I do not feel safe on this campus. As an advocate of women, I feel strongly that I am at real risk of becoming the target of violent retaliatory actions perpetrated by Sage Gerard and the organization sponsoring him, A Voice For Men.

Emphasis mine.

The KSU administration investigated these complaints, and concluded that Gerard was not responsible for creating a hostile work environment, and that his speech was protected under the first amendment. The complaints were dismissed; no charges against Gerard were even filed.

He was asked to stay out of women’s bathrooms in the future. And the KSU counsel who prepared the report also had this suggestion:

We do recommend that Mr. Gerard continue to refrain from further contact with the persons who made the hotline reports (or those who Mr. Gerard believes may have made them), to avoid any real or perceived retaliation. In addition, we recommend that Mr. Gerard refrain from further contact with the members of the Interdisciplinary Studies Department to avoid escalating the situation to the point that it becomes a hostile environment in the legal sense.

That’s right. Gerard wasn’t charged with anything. He faced no sanctions. He was simply asked not to contact those on campus he was making uncomfortable.

But apparently this โ€œno contactโ€ request is so offensive to Gerard and his AVFM comrades that they have decided to launch the very retaliation campaign that the KSU complainants were afraid of. Thus, once again, proving their critics have been right to label them a hate group in the first place.

AVFM’s new target joins a long list of women (and a few men) who have been doxxed and/or harassed in retaliation for their โ€œcrimesโ€ against Paul Elam’s delicate sensibilities.

Elam started off this parade of harassment shortly after this site started by attempting to get a woman fired from her job at a women’s shelter for a comment she made here in which she wondered aloud if Elam had a criminal record.

Since then, Elam and his AVFM cronies have:

Started Register-Her, a fake โ€œOffenders Registryโ€ designed to vilify and intimidate women. (The site is now in the hands of AVFM defector John Hembling.)

Launched a hate campaign against a college student for attending a demonstration and making a few jokes on Twitter.

Gleefully participated in the unending harassment of a Canadian feminist that one AVFM author dubbed โ€œlittle red frothing fornication mouth,โ€ for her crime of โ€ฆ arguing with some AVFM activists at a demonstration once. Unflattering images of โ€œBig Redโ€ at that demonstration have since been plastered all over the internet; she even has a page devoted to her on KnowYourMeme.

Launched a years-long harassment campaign against feminist writer Jessica Valenti. Starting with a 2011 post in which Elam himself attacked her as a “stupid, hateful bitch,” the hate campaign has moved on toย  labeling her a โ€œchild abuser,โ€ posting her personal photos on AVFM without permission, putting her on Register-Her.com, and libeling her by making up inflammatory quotations and attributing them to her. (AVFM’s โ€œsocial media directorโ€ and serial quote-fabricator Janet Bloomfield was evidently permabanned from Twitter for her persistent harassment of Valenti.)

Supported GamerGate’s harassment of cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian, with AVFM’s PR whiz Bloomfield doing her part by blatantly libeling her on Twitter.

Launched a campaign of vilification against a Chicago-area โ€œmommy bloggerโ€ for writing that she felt uncomfortable with the idea of a male day care staffer taking young girls to the bathroom.

Along with an assortment of white supremacists and online assholes, joined in a hate campaign against a young woman wrongly accused of trashing applications from white guys as a staffer at a college admissions office. Elam declared the woman, by name, to be a โ€œwarped by ideologyโ€ with โ€œdeep seated prejudices that guided her unscrupulous actions.โ€ The blog was a hoax, and the woman Elam so eagerly vilified had nothing to do with it.

Repeatedly accused a Detroit schoolteacher โ€“ with zero evidence โ€“ of sending death threats to a hotel that was scheduled to host AVFM’s conference last summer.

Published an article falsely accusing a male feminist blogger of being a โ€œconfessed rapist,โ€ because, as Elam puts it, โ€œkarma is a BITCH.โ€ (AVFM’s defense? It was being โ€œsatirical.โ€)

Accused a former AVFM staffer, with no evidence, of absconding with money donated for a men’s shelter.

Attacked feminist and skeptic Rebecca Watson on numerous occasions, including a post from Elam in which he used the term โ€œwhoreโ€ several dozen times.

And of course AVFM has accused me of everything from starting Reddit’s terrible BeatingWomen subreddit to somehow faking my site’s traffic stats on Alexa. (AVFM has never even bothered to provide “evidence” for any of their various accusations against me, perhaps because none of them are even remotely true.) Elam has posted bizarre sexual fantasies involving me, called me a pervert, and publicly suggested that I kill myself. One of AVFMs most, er, enthusiastic activists once left me a creepy, threatening voicemail at 1:38 AM. And AVFM โ€œactivism directorโ€ Attila L. Vinczer has tried to dox me, with somewhat comic results.

This isn’t even close to an exhaustive list of AVFM’s assorted retaliatory campaigns against feminists and other critics.

AVFM has made it very clear to the world โ€“ through its actions and its rhetoric โ€“ that if someone starts putting up AVFM posters or stickers on your campus or in your neighborhood, you have every reason to worry.

AVFM is not a civil or human rights group by any stretch of the imagination. It is a hate group, plain and simple, less akin to Martin Luther King Jr. than it is to those who so stubbornly fought against him.

NOTE: Here is Sage Gerard’s (aka Victor Zen’s) video of his sticker “activism.” You can probably see why people found it a little unsettling.

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WatermelonSugar
WatermelonSugar
9 years ago

Warm thoughts for Kitteh, too.

On topic of the tread, JudgyBitch has hopped on the bandwagon and is posting pictures of random women on her blog. One of them is a person I know of–in passing, but still, it hits close to home and it really sucks.

Has there been any update on any of this from KSU?

Buttercup Q. Skullpants

@Falconer – yeah, probably best to avoid creepy manifestations. With two twins cycling around, you’d run the risk of summoning up quadruplets.

The ape hangers are pretty cool though. They don’t make bikes like they used to.

gilshalos
9 years ago

Kitteh!? Kitteh ?? We miss you!

Falconer
9 years ago

I emailed David about something else, and he replied, and it just now occurred to me to ask him if he’d heard from Kittehs lately, since he said he would be asking her to surrender her Mod status for a little bit.

Cavalluccio Marino
9 years ago

@alaisvex, @sunnysombrera: Your responses made me lol. ๐Ÿ˜€ The dude who gave the condom advice would probably be accused of misandry by some guys.

Although I’m new here, I nonetheless want to send good vibes to Kittehsurf. I read that thread and it came across as being tough on all involved in the debate.

alaisvex
alaisvex
9 years ago

Oh wait! I know why it’s misandry. It implies that we don’t buy their arguments that even the largest-sized condoms out there are too small for them. Sunnysombrera, you are a genius.

gilshalos
9 years ago

I am privileged as a cis het female. But…this is the only place I have ever felt able to talk about my eating disorder.. And I like everyone here, and their gender or gender pref’s are irrelevant. Please, I know the discussion is vital to some pepole, and I know I am relying on privilege…but this is the only online place I can talk freely. I have nowhere else

Cyberwulf
Cyberwulf
9 years ago

I just read the thread of doom, and oh my god what a clusterfuck. Very few people covering themselves in glory, lots of people covering themselves in shit.

Puddleglum
9 years ago

I have been trading emails with kittehserf and she says ‘I’m fine, and appreciate their kind thoughts, and I’ll miss them’. I don’t think she’ll be returning here anytime soon.

WatermelonSugar
WatermelonSugar
9 years ago

That thread left me…in a major weird place. I actually lost sleep over it (not so much about the actual thread, but the way it made my head spin; I stayed up in ADHD-extreme mode reading article after article)–and I didn’t even participate it. It left me with so, so many questions that I don’t feel safe to ask here.

I’m sad to hear Kitteh won’t be back soon. She was a great mod and a thought-provoking commenter.

Sam-I-Was?
Sam-I-Was?
9 years ago

Puddleglum, I know I don’t post much but please let Kittehserf know that she made me smile through some tough times & I’ll miss her voice. The happiest wishes to her & Mr. K.

PS I’d still be up for buying a calendar featuring Mr. K. if she ever makes one ๐Ÿ™‚

grumpycatisagirl
grumpycatisagirl
9 years ago

I am cutting back on my commenting here (partly because I have almost full-time employment again), but I’d also like to express best wishes to kittehserf. I have found her to be a very good “listener.”

grumpycatisagirl
grumpycatisagirl
9 years ago

Also, she made my lovely gravatar.

Kat K
Kat K
9 years ago

I don’t often comment here, but I’m a daily reader. Hope Kittehserf is well. Kitteh, I’ll miss your comments. E-hugs if you want ’em.

Magpie
Magpie
9 years ago

Kind thoughts to kittehserf

cupisnique
9 years ago

While I think that discussion was going nowhere, it did leave me feeling confused and uneasy. I still have no idea what happened. It seems like people get accused here for being too hard on people who say offensive things, or going too soft on them.

katz
9 years ago

If anyone has a problem with my behavior, I hope you will tell me about it either by posting or by using that forwarding address I made to tell me in person ([email protected]). I promise not to bite. I don’t want to be a person that other people have unspoken issues with, and by definition one can’t know if that’s the case.

Two things I will fess up to voluntarily: First, I’m the one who was guilty of coddling Ally and shielding her from reasonable criticism. All that can be said for me is that I was trying to help, but I was totally oblivious to the fact that my attempts to help were not only harming the community as a whole, but were probably even harming the person I was trying to help. I should have listened to some of the older commenters who have more experience with that sort of thing.

The other is that I’ve made this space less welcoming to atheists than it should be, which is something that I’m trying to be better about.

Alex
9 years ago

katz,

Only speaking for myself, but I really appreciate that. Thank you. Obviously, some people have been hurt in all of this to the point of not wanting to come back, but I hope everyone can take it as a learning experience for manipulative (if uninentionally so, ymmv on that) behaviour. And also, no one thinks badly of you for trying to help a person in need. The coddling and shielding by several people (only reason I’m not naming is because I honestly don’t remember everyone involved in doing that, but it wasn’t just you) was obviously damaging, but you also did things that genuinely helped her with the awful situation she was in. And you know what? Plenty of us have helped and defended a person only to learn what went horribly wrong later. So again, thank you for your comment.

I’m not sure how much I’ll be commenting here in future, but I always associate you with the countdowns to troll meltdowns, and of course A Voice For Pierre. ๐Ÿ™‚

mildlymagnificent
9 years ago

I should have listened to some of the older commenters who have more experience with that sort of thing.

Rocks and hard places, katz. Rocks and hard places.

I’ve had to try and help people in the past who were, literally, their own worst enemies. Ally isn’t one of those, her family took care of that, but when she was here she was both desperately in need of help and support as well as being a pretty difficult “missing stair”. Leaving everyone walking on eggshells and feeling inadequate for trying to walk anywhere, all at once.

The other thing is that she’s young and opinionated, which is not really a sin, it’s an annoying stage most of us go through. She left me, and probably several others, feeling defensive and hamstrung about approaching her on some of her positions and some behaviours. The one thing that might — or might not — occur to her when she’s older is that her overly dogmatic and associated manipulative behaviours are a fairly exact obverse of the same dogmatic and manipulative coin of her father.

It takes a longish time as an adult to realise, let alone squarely face the fact, that many things you’ve prided yourself on doing differently from the way you were brought up can look to others like a mirror image of exactly the same problematic attitudes and behaviours you’re so pleased to believe you’ve abandoned.

Robert
Robert
9 years ago

I am going to miss Kittehserf as much as I already miss LBT.

alaisvex
alaisvex
9 years ago

Seconding Robert. Both great commenters and people.

Ken L.
Ken L.
9 years ago

kittehserf one of the greats on this site, Fairer and smarter then most people , easy to see why she was a mod. come back soon and if you don’t, I truly hope you have a good life.

Mouse Farts
Mouse Farts
9 years ago

Oh no. I wandered off to do meatspace things after a while – I saw the beginning of the nasty thread, but left when the storm was still forming.

I’m new, but I noticed some stuff I had in common with kittehs and was trying to work up the courage to say “hey! I would like to talk to you about mutual interests!” despite being shy. If you come back, kittehserf, you could email me sometime! I thought you were super interesting! I am fartsmouse at gmail. I mean…other people can email me too. That’s cool. I just wish I’d been brave before kittehs left ๐Ÿ™

On another topic – Lurker on the previous page was saying we were really mean and insensitive –

I also think some of you are just as insensitive as the โ€œcrazyโ€-wielders. The one gif implying that she (the current โ€œcrazyโ€-wielder) sit down and chill?

That was me with the gif. I did think they were overreacting to what I thought was a pretty nonjudgmental discussion, and I still think it was a misunderstanding. Like, “if you calm down a second and reread that, I really don’t think anyone meant it the way you read it.” But I certainly didn’t elaborate and I can definitely see where it could come across as kind of Mean Girl, and in any case I probably shouldn’t invalidate someone’s reaction that way. I’m sorry about that.

Falconer
9 years ago

I have no problem with you, katz. Thank you so much for looking out for Ally and for helping her to run away from her father.

I did think you were doing us a service, by stating the obvious fact that if we consistently run people off, we should think about if they have anything in common and why they feel run off.

LBT are doing well, at least Mac, Rogan and Sneak have the energy to get snarky on their Tumblr because someone told them they should be concerned about “fake trans teens” when that is so far below what they actually have to worry about, it’s not funny.

alaisvex
alaisvex
9 years ago

Glad to hear that they’re still up for snarking on tumblr when other tumblrites fail to leave their stupid comments in their pockets and instead have to inflict them on people we don’t need that shot right now. ๐Ÿ™‚

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