Our old friend Paul Elam of Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men has promised his long-suffering and evidently increasingly broke donors that he would be looking into some exciting new money-making ventures in order to fund his lifestyle site.
We’ve already seen the the first of these get-rich-quick schemes in action: AVFM’s new publishing house. Elam evidently sees publishing as a sort of virtual ATM in which near-zero effort is repaid handsomely with cash.
The first book from what’s now called Zeta Press was a poorly received collection of re-edited blog posts about Men Going Their Own Way. AVFM followed with e-book reprints of the public domain writings of anti-women’s-suffrage socialist E. Belfort Bax, first published more than a century ago. (Never mind that Bax’s works are already available for free online at Marxists.org, the Internet Archive, and elsewhere.)
Apparently feeling that they are not yet squeezing enough blood from the turnip that is E. Belfort Bax, AVFM is floating another idea: a book that “translates” Bax’s often convoluted Edwardian era prose into hip and happening modern lingo. In an post today, AVFM “writer” August Løvenskiolds presents a little sample of what this might look like.
Unfortunately, Mr. Løvenskiolds may not be the best man for the job. For one thing, he seems to lack the necessary attention to detail. In his post today, he refers to E. Belfort Bax several times as E. BEDFORD Bax. I’ve indicated one instance in the screenshot below:
But there may be an even bigger problem with Mr. Løvenskiolds’ proposal: He seems to think that “translating” Bax into the parlance of our times means, well, completely rewriting it so it sounds like a Paul Elam fever dream.
Here is a sentence from Bax’s writings:
From all we have said, it will now be evident, one would think, to the most prejudiced reader that modern English Law, following obsequiously a deluded or apathetic stage of public opinion, has solved the problem of the division of rights and duties between the sexes, by conceding to woman all rights, and imposing on man all duties.
And here is Løvenskiolds’ “translation” of this passage:
So, it all comes down to this: even the most tone-deaf feminists have to be quaking in their Louboutins over the facts I’ve presented so far – so much so that I expect a false rape accusation from some disgruntled women’s studies ingenue will occur at any time. The general apathy to a critical examination of the claims of feminism is policed by such false accusations, which are a near certainty once a critical examination of feminism begins.
Rape hoaxes are well-known and were an “old school” feminist tactic at the time To Kill a Mockingbird was written fifty plus years ago. I expect one to drop on me like Dorothy’s tornado=blown house in The Wizard of Oz but unlike a privileged Wicked Witch I’ve taken precautions against such petards.
The fact remains: modern feminism has gained all the rights of men, and then some, while rejecting the obligations of men to preserve society and protect women and children. When women have all the rights and men, all the obligations, this system of society has a simple name. Slavery.
A person with no rights and lots of obligations is identical to the most downtrodden of slaves. A person with all the rights and no obligations is the most extreme of tyrants.
I’m not making this up; if you don’t believe me, take a look at his post.
I think we could probably do a better job than Mr. Løvenskiolds. And so I’d like to invite you all to try your hand at some Bax translations – take the passage above, or any other passage from Bax’s work, and “translate” it into something a little more groovy in far out ways.
NOTE TO EXCESSIVELY LITERAL MINDED READERS: Paul Elam is not actually our friend.
I’ve never seen a translation of anything that was over three times longer than the original, or harder for me to parse.
Also how sad is a “movement” when their biggest proponents are all dead?
Also deaf God the pop culture references. It’s like if I inserted a Percy Jackson crossover into the Odyssey.
@RTK,
Well, of course, it certainly sounded like an anti-suffrage protest, but we all know that, as Mr. Løvenskiolds has so wisely revealed, it was really a protest against a law that would legalize false rape accusations. Yes indeed, they were legalized in 1918, as the eminent historians at AVFM have been so studious as to uncover. How did these facts escape the notice of other historians? Well, we can obviously blame that oversight on the vast feminazilluminati conspiracy. *nods sagely*
@alaisvex
heh. I still think the answer is really that no one over there bothered to read it, but I’ll stick with your answer because it’s funnier.
@RTK,
Lol. In all honesty, if any of those so-called historians over there have ever done more than skim and quote-mine a primary source that they’re trying to reference, I’d be stunned.
My iteration:
Dudes, these days it’s like bitches are bogarting our marijuana ciggarettes and chugging our brewskis, but never having to buy wacky tobacky or refill the icebox. And if that doesn’t harsh your mellow, then, man, whatever.