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, “nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.”
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 “humanitarian” 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 – 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 – in particular the Ku Klux Klan, which in the 1960s posted “wanted posters” featuring the faces of civil rights activists, including King himself. Some of those whose faces appeared on these “wanted posters,” most famously King himself, were later murdered.
In more recent years, anti-abortion activists have posted similar “wanted posters” featuring the pictures and addresses of doctors who perform abortions – some of whom were themselves later murdered.
Now AVFM has taken up this classic technique of intimidation.
Last year, AVFM activists – including the site’s “activism director” 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 women’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 “demonstrat[ing] a desire to kill women” 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 “sticker run” 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 “activism” 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 “let’s go fuck with people.”
Gerard clearly sees what he’s doing as a deliberately provocative act. He talks about putting AVFM stickers in places “where they cannot be ignored” and about his desires to “push the boundaries” by plastering them in places they’re really not supposed to be put – 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 “hostile work environment” 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 women’s bathrooms on campus, placing stickers intended to intimidate women. … Gerard’s behavior indicates contemplation of violence against women (he posts art depicting guns pointed at women’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 “no contact” 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 “crimes” 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 “Offenders Registry” designed to vilify and intimidate women. (The site is now in the hands of AVFM defector John Hembling.)
Gleefully participated in the unending harassment of a Canadian feminist that one AVFM author dubbed “little red frothing fornication mouth,” for her crime of … arguing with some AVFM activists at a demonstration once. Unflattering images of “Big Red” 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 to labeling her a “child abuser,” 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 “social media director” 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 “mommy blogger” 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 “warped by ideology” with “deep seated prejudices that guided her unscrupulous actions.” The blog was a hoax, and the woman Elam so eagerly vilified had nothing to do with it.
Published an article falsely accusing a male feminist blogger of being a “confessed rapist,” because, as Elam puts it, “karma is a BITCH.” (AVFM’s defense? It was being “satirical.”)
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 “whore” 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 “activism director” 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 – through its actions and its rhetoric – 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.
Semi off topic, but in relation to the condom thing during WW2 special extra large rubber sheaths were made to protect tank and artillery barrels. Churchill insisted they be labelled “Prophylactics British Troops Standard Issue. Size: Small” in case they fell into German hands.
Oh absolutely, and I agree. It’s a bit like saying “I don’t want to wear shoes because my feet are too big” when one is trying to fit in to shoes that are two sizes too small. I guess entitlement to have however one of those doodbroz wants is more of a deal than being able to say they have to buy large condoms.
And seconding on seeking out birth control on your own–I spent years and years with terrible side effects just for the piece of mind.
There’s also the other more general issue. Schools and universities get a bit weary of dealing with the results of young people’s “boisterous” behaviour and they tend to respond in a tired, “not again” or “what is it this time?” mode when anything happens. But they really need to pay a bit more attention to stuff that affects other people — especially when it comes to giving a complainant’s name to someone who’s clearly not on the same page as the rest of the student body.
Okay, here’s what I got:
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/complaintintro.html
Per what I’ve been able to dig up, anyone (you don’t have to be affiliated with the school) can make a Title IX complaint.
In place of a named person, you can instead declare that the discrimination is against a ‘class’–in this case, “female students and faculty at a Title IX-subject school”.
In this case, to be clear, the issue is that the school is failing to properly enforce a harassment-free environment, by taking no disciplinary action against a person–Sage Gerard (aka Victor Zen)–who has obtained access to the women’s bathrooms by posing as an employee of the institution, and who then put up the stickers. Furthermore, when a faculty member attempted to get the administration to address the issue, the offender contacted an outside third party (Paul Elam) in an attempt to secure retaliation–which is, in itself, a violation of Title IX.
Oh, and now I’m going to undercut the good deed of doing that research: For some unfortunate reasons, I myself cannot file such a formal complaint. I’m hoping someone else here doesn’t have the same sorts of restrictions involved that I do.
@sunny – Wow. That guy just went on and on about how oppressed men are. And I am not sure how this affected him in the slightest as he pointed out he doesn’t have sex with women. I’m confused…
That’s one of the defenses used, yes.
Right. A lot of people have been giving me the “you can’t have an opinion on this because you’re not French” thing – even though they have an opinion about it – and a Francophone friend of mine in Quebec explained to me he’s been aware of the magazine for a while and thinks their humor often comes off as racist.
So, yeah, it bothers me when people think EVERYONE who is French or speaks the language is totally supportive of Charlie Hebdo and like its material (unless they’re Muslims). The reality is that, of course, there are plenty of people who don’t like the magazine – including former staff member Oliver Cyran:
http://posthypnotic.randomstatic.net/charliehebdo/Charlie_Hebdo_article%2011.htm
I dunno, by Cyran’s words speak true to me. I’ve noticed this before in the U.S. too, where seemingly progressive individuals after a tragic incident – where Islamic terrorism is involved – start to overwhelmingly target a particular group for ridicule, using their progressive credentials to deny there’s anything bigoted about what they do.
Which has been erroneously labeled as “victim-blaming” – except no one, besides some Fundamentalist Muslims, have said they “brought it on themselves” and acknowledged what happened was terrible.
I know I did but, when I came across the magazine’s material, it occurred to me this sudden hero-worship of them as defenders of free speech might be a bit wrong-headed. It’s tragic those cartoonists and editors were killed over their work and they shouldn’t have, but that doesn’t mean one can’t look at their material and still find it problematic.
My issue is the notion that you can’t talk about the problematic nature of the cartoons because of the violence that occurred. It reminds me of when the U.S. was going to go to war with Iraq and people who argued that, just maybe, it was a bad idea were silenced by those who pretty much excused everything by yelling “9/11!”
It’s unsettling to me that the same people who argue for FREEZE PEACH are now, in fact, silencing anyone who brings up the cartoons with their free speech. It’s like that bit in Animal Farm where the pigs explained their abuse of power by claiming “some animals are more equal than others” after having established “all animals are equal.”
Yes, and the shooting has reinforced their anti-Muslim and bigoted attitudes. Given the majority of their cartoons, the magazine obviously got a kick out of specifically targeting and mocking Muslims along with the ethnic groups associated with them – probably because they knew the people who would enjoy it would be fairly Islamophobic themselves.
Kestrel: maybe it was some sort of “brotherhood” thing he felt. Like, “it doesn’t affect me but HOW DARE SHE insist that my fellow men must wear condoms by proving that there’s no such thing as ‘too big!’ She’s so mean for educating women and girls about their bullshit excuse! How will my fellow men get their entitlement issues satisfied now? MISANDRY!”
Nick name Nick,
Who are you arguing against? Who here is trying to silence you?
I do wonder what the point of harping on about how terrible they are though. It’s kind of reminding me of when gamergaters say “I don’t condone harassment, but Zoe Quinn slept with all these guys and she’s a fake gamer!” Even if you don’t believe that their employees deserved to be shot, it’s seen as bad form to criticize harshly so soon after an incident like this. That’s probably why you’re getting pushback from some progressives. It’s social convention to not speak ill of the dead shortly after their death.
IANAL, but I’d say there’s ample grounds for a Title IX complaint here. Gerard is in flagrant violation of the school’s own published sexual misconduct policy, which specifically prohibits harassment, including the creation of “an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work or educational environment”, and retaliation against complainants.
I don’t know if the sticker incident has already gone through a formal hearing with their Title IX officer, but whipping up Paul Elam’s stalking machine is clear retaliation and should result in stronger sanctions against Gerard. If the University can’t/won’t resolve it themselves, then it can be appealed to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. I’m sure they’d be happy to “adjust” KSU’s federal funding and file an embarrassing lawsuit against the school.
@freemage–
Wow, thank you for doing all that footwork! You are awesome!
I am hoping that someone directly involved with the incident will file (or at least take some action). I’m going to wait and see for now. I don’t know if I have it in me to go up against AVFM-affiliated stuff. I am not in a strong enough mental place to deal with them–though, fairly, I don’t think even the soundest person in the world could handle their level of harassment without being shaken.
Oops! Ninja’d by freemage’s great research!
@ sunnysombrera
That link is a thing of beauty and wonder. Evil radfems want to abort male babies because someone pointed out that condoms are stretchy? Bless you, ridiculous misogynistic dude.
On the other argument involving talbotfish and Kyla and Dawn and so on, can we seriously not have a single conversation on this blog that doesn’t result in people throwing their shoes at each other right now? How did that even become an argument?
So, condoms, the only reliable method for STD prevention besides abstinence and (possibly) selection of trusted partners who have been tested, are oppressive to men. What’s probably the best protection against STDs for the sexually active and a good way for men to take responsibility for birth control for themselves, which MRAs claim that they want, is somehow Misandry. STD prevention and male birth control are Misandry!
Oh wait. I actually understand why it’s Misandry. It’s birth control for men, and if they have to acknowledge that men have an option for birth control besides abstinence and vasectomies, how then can they convince everyone that they’re being oppressed because women have a pill?
I understand that no condom makes penises feel happier in the moment, but do these guys not care about their own health and safety at all?
I do love how these guys whine about how women get decide whether to carry a pregnancy to term or get an abortion. That it means men have no control over whether or not they reproduce, therefore they’re oppressed. Yet when you point out that condoms do allow men to protect themselves against unwanted child support payments, that’s somehow misandry too.
QFT. I still remember Roosh’s post about his AIDS scare, and I still can’t figure out why that didn’t make him want to use condoms again. Instead, he’s still just trying to guess which girls with whom he’s having flings have STDs and which don’t because that’s apparently something that you can do.
Seriously, do these guys have no self-love at all? No concern for their own safety and no desire to do their part to prevent themselves in getting pregnant? No desire to use one of their most potent weapon in the war against the feminine tyrannies that are sperm-jacking and child support? (Okay, that last one was a joke, but they think that those things exist!)
My opinion on dudes you don’t want to wear a condom is that I have been through so much crap about vagina maintenance + birth control (surgery, hell cramps, yearly pap smear, having a small stick inserted in my arm) that the least they can do is put a hat on their penis to keep us both from getting STDs. If they have a problem with that, they can go fuck themselves, because they sure as hell aren’t going to fuck me.
Does he think people walk around with “Has STD” written on their foreheads? What I’m guessing he’s doing is just judging how sexually active he thinks someone is based on whatever gross, sexist ideas he has about that, and deciding whether or not a condom is needed accordingly. This is a remarkably stupid approach to sexual health.
Roosh doesn’t seem to have much self-love at all. Honestly, I’d feel sorry for him if he wasn’t such an asshole and wasn’t harming other people, because he seems miserable.
As I recall, it was basically him trying to tell which women were promiscuous (because apparently the only way that you get STDs is by sleeping around a lot and being woman?) and how willing they seemed to use condoms.
You have to have sex with at least X number of people in order to catch an STD. It are science.
Hey, it must work. Roosh doesn’t have AIDS yet. (At least as far as he knows because he’s resolved to never get tested again.)
…
You know, I think that we should warn women about this particular part of his history too.
Re. condoms: I once read an article on sex tips in a magazine (I forget which one), and a male writer advised men to try different condom sizes. More dudes should listen to that advice.
Re. Gerard’s creepiness: I sincerely hope that something will be done before physical harm occurs. Creating an unsafe work environment is a threat, to my mind.
@N.P.S.:
“Can you imagine if a woman was going around actively making men feel unsafe? Would that fly for even a nanosecond? Of course not. Men are people, duh. They should totally feel safe in the environments in which they live, work, and study! But women? Those sub-creature things? Who fucking cares? Not anyone, that’s who.”
Your comment reminds me of a quote in Laurie Penny’s article on shy nerd men: “That’s just not the way this culture expects us [women] to think about men. Men get to be whole people at all times. Women get to be objects, or symbols, or alluring aliens whose responses you have to game to “get” what you want.”
(Sidenote: I commented on another thread as Seahorse, but WordPress informed me that the name was already taken when I tried to create an account; hence the Italian version of the name.)
@WWTH
@alaisvex
Remember these MRA/PUA types want to have their cake and eat it. They want nothing to dampen their sexy fun times but also want to be in charge when it comes to women and reproducing. It’s that attitude of “why should I exhibit self control when I can control others to work around me?” Then they get pissy because the law and/or women don’t play along.
That’s probably misandry somehow. Maybe because suggesting that men try different size condoms so that they can find the one that feels most comfortable during sex is too much like suggesting that women try different types of birth control if one method has lots of negative side-effects and because asking men to do anything that women are expected to do is misandry.