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.
me and not you:
I don’t hate them, but I’ve been known to use them in a rather random manner in the past..
Argenti:
BTW I thought your translation was great at making the text more accessible. Like Clear English version but more like “Clear bullshit”.
Also, good to see you.
Yes, it is good to see you, Argenti. How goes it?
OT, but there’s a nice shout-out to We Hunted the Mammoth on Captain Awkward.
Hi argenti! ::waves::
Hi all! I’m alright, got a tortoise, there are pics in the other thread ^.^
Almost two?! Gods they grow up fast!
Freemage, other than the parts encouraging the mothers to hit their asshole sons, I think that was spot on. Sad that they had to get torn a new one by their mothers to get the point across, but hey, if getting screamed at by mom makes these oversized boys act like grownups, let the yelling commence! (Granted, Italian family, yelling is frequently the tone of voice, if only because only so many people can talk at once, but damned if we’ll let us stop us!)
Maybe they were confusing him with Nathaniel Bedford Forrest. (That said, having read Bax’ paragraph about child rape accusations, I can’t find it in my heart to pity him.)
Awesome translations, all of you.
maistrechat:
Just as a note, it took me a couple of read-throughs to realize that ‘legal publishers’ here meant ‘publishers of material relating to the legal profession’ as opposed to my first interpretation as ‘legitimately recognized publishers’.
Since we’re talking about translating specific forms of English to English here anyway…
I might just be focusing on one point here, but I’m getting the feeling that Mr. Løvenskiolds didn’t actually read ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. I mean, it’s a pretty big point in the book that the entire rape trial was instigated by the girl’s father, who was using the case as a way of covering up the years of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse he had subjected her to. It’s also heavily implied that he raped Mayella himself after seeing her have consensual sex with Tom.
In case anyone wasn’t sure yet: MRA’s – not big on reading skills.
Okay, for once: Read. The. Comments.
http://meh-guh.tumblr.com/post/109072065811
Heeheehee….
@freemage: I’ve seen that one before, albeit without the Nice Seal at the bottom.
It’s always satisfying to see an own goal like that.
AHA!
I’ve found it again! I was looking for this yesterday! My Google-Fu was weak then, I s’pose.
http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1008392/thumbs/o-WHY-MEN-SHOULDNT-VOTE-570.jpg?6
Hey, translate this Løvenskiolds!
@WithAZ,
I was just going to say that! Besides the fact that it’s old and it’s fiction, To Kill A Mockingbird isn’t a good example of the MRA false rape accusation narrative because it’s about an abusive white man who bullies his daughter, whom he’s probably raped himself, into accusing a black man whom she kissed of rape. To Kill a Mockingbird is about the way that white men used the fear that black men were after “their” women (and it was always rape, never consensual sex, in their minds) to judicially murder, or just plain lynch, black men who got too “uppity.” But then again, an MRA would mistake To Kill a Mockingbird for a treatise on false rape accusations rather than racism.
Anita Sarkeesian compiled one week of twitter harassment in one place. Wow. http://femfreq.tumblr.com/post/109319269825/one-week-of-harassment-on-twitter
I saw that on tumblr, WWTH. She did not hide it (which I thought was good), and it took up 56 internet pages on my computer.
@weirwoodtreehugger
God, that’s depressing. Though I have to say, I laughed at that one dude who remembered to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ while asking Anita to die. After all, there’s no reason to be rude if you’re making a death threat, right?
But joking aside, this is really terrible. The worrying thread I’m seeing in this list, and in basically every conversation about gamers’ behaviour since forever is that verbal abuse is considered ‘normal’ in the gaming community. I’ve gotten into countless arguments with guys who said that they get death threats and other abuse hurled at them on a regular basis (the implication being that anyone complaining about it should toughen up).
The thing is, when I’m talking to either developers or to games journalists, most all of them seem to acknowledge that the behaviour of many players is a major issue in the community; one that needs to be tackled. Every few months, I also see articles popping up on Gamasutra (among other) describing new tactics for curbing bad behaviour between players, to varying degrees of succes (Riot Games seem to be getting very good at this).
So I’m looking at these two groups of people, both of whom represent gaming to at least some extent, as they drift further and further apart on not just this issue, but on basically every other issue that regularly resurfaces within GamerGate, whether it be matters of feminism, diversity, publishers’ monopolies, etc. That’s something that’s not likely to change soon, despite the best efforts of both devs and GamerGators alike. I guess what I’m trying to say here is: shit is fucked up, shit’s been fucked up for a while now, and shit’s probably going to fuck up a lot worse before anything gets better.
Wow, I didn’t mean to go off on a rant like that. I’ve been carrying this around for too long.
How common verbal abuse is really depends on what gaming community you’re in. I’ve very rarely experienced death threats, if ever, and never experienced rape threats in an online community, and I’ve been part of a lot of them: WoW, Rifts, Aion, TOR, Star Trek, ESO, Guild Wars 2.
Shooters may be worse. Certain games might be worse than others. Some factions and servers are worse than others.
I know that when the two factions suddenly were mashed together in Rifts, the tone took a deep dive into juvenile crap, and suddenly you started hearing a lot of anti-gay slurs, which was awful, as prior to that it was rare to hear that sort of thing. I dropped the game not long after that.
These guys claiming that harassment is normal are speaking of a tiny segment of the community, and that community is part of another small segment of the gaming industry (their game) which in turn is a small part of another segment of the gaming industry (competitive or shooter style games, perhaps?).
They usually either ignorantly believe that all games are like theirs, or they’ll say that any game that isn’t like theirs isn’t a “real game,” and just play gatekeeper to exclude anyone who doesn’t play exactly the game and type of game they play.
Not too bright, and definitely inaccurate.
Adam:
Also, what about gestating and raising the next generation? Did they have artificial wombs and self-raising children in 1900? Did men take that stuff on and no one noticed? And then swapped it back to the women, also without anyone noticing? Were child care and housework somehow not duties? What about the women who had to work at other things to make ends meet (which we know there have been plenty of since forever)?
It was ignorant balderdash then and it’s ill-informed bullshit now. That’s my translation.
Part of me wonders if he keep mis-spelling the name as “Bedford” because he’s conflating it with KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Jarnsaxa
Agreed. And I have to wonder why their “awesome” way to take care of it is to simply ignore the harassment. Out of sight, out of mind?
But, then again, babies don’t know about object permanence.
On a happier note: I’ve been playing around with Minecraft mods, and in Tinker’s Construct, you can make new tools and weapons. So I made a hammer called The Patriarchy Smasher made out of blue Osmium ore from another mod and with a paper handle so I can add more traits to it. (I put a diamond on the end so it’s more durable. I’m also thinking of putting a lava crystal on it so it auto-smelts all the ores I dig.)
I’d say it’s a Sex in the City reference.
Kim – you could very well be right, again showing their utter ignorance – I suppose some may say that Sex and the City is about liberal feminists, but no, those characters really are not feminists! Having the options for a good job and the freedom to live an independent life may be a goal of feminism, but not every woman that has them is automatically a feminist.
I could never bring myself to watch Sex and the City. They’re white and rich and conventionally-attractive and they have *problems.*
Yeah, people with those characteristics do still have problems, but they’re problems I’d much rather have than wondering how I’m going to pay my bills and whether I could afford a gym membership to pull some weight back off and regain my health. (Nope, as it turns out.)
There are several references that virtually all of these assclowns make. Sex & the City is one; another is insisting that women apply different rules for sexual harassment, “If you look like Brad Pitt.” It’s ALWAYS Brad Pitt, for some reason, never any of the dozens of other male celebrity heartthrobs out there.
Apologies if this has already been discussed in the comments thread, but since I believe I might be the only person on this site as well as AVFM that’s actually taken the time to read Bax’s books in their entirety…
It should probably be noted that these writings are part of a larger argument of Bax’s against the movement that was fast cumulating in 1918’s RA Act. (For Americans, the RA act it the rough equivalent to the 19th Amendment.) These writings, then, are not a call to fight for men’s rights — they are an argument against allowing women the right to vote. (FWIW, much of Jon Hembling’s arguments about women’s lacking the ability engage in moral thinking are lifted directly from Bax.)
Not that this in any way changes the OP, of course. I just thought someone should be aware that the works being “translated” are actually a call to forbid women the vote.
I’m pretty sure that the people on AVFM, whether they would agree with Bax or not, have no idea that this is the case. As I said above, I’m pretty sure none of them — including Elam — has ever taken the time to read them. I think they have all just been scanned for bits and pieces, and found enough anti-women quotes to declare Bax brilliant.
The More You Know, and all that…
“Look, I think I’ve made it clear even to the most biased of you that our laws– which are based on public opinion, whether based in lies or just apathy– decided that the solution to the whole “division of the sexes” issue was to give women all the rights and privileges, and give men all the responsibility.” Not hard.