Oh, people. I would really like to take a little vacation from all the A Voice for Men posts, but as it turns out I have found the most A-Voice-for-Menny AVFM thread ever, and I must share it with you.
Ok, so a couple of days ago, AVFM’s Dear Leader Paul Elam posted an uncharacteristically brief video titled “A 41 second lesson for Adam Serwer and the mainstream media.” It consisted of a 41-second snippet of Elam’s phone interview with Buzzfeed’s Adam Serwer, one of the authors of that scathing expose of Elam, in which Elam boasts to Serwer about how much traffic AVFM gets every time there is a news article reporting what an utterly terrible person he is. (I’m loosely paraphrasing here; as far as I can tell, Elam is not actually aware he is a terrible person.)
A few of the AVFM regulars sprinkled some comments below Elam’s offering when he put it up on AVFM, and there are some utter gems amongst them, demonstrating some of the ways that AVFMers try to magically stave off the collective realization that the reason virtually every real journalist who has ever written about them thinks they’re terrible is that they are indeed terrible.
One commenter gamely repeated a familiar truism that is not actually true:
Then a self-described Man Going His Own Way suggested that Serwer is not a real man at all:
AVFM’s “Activism Director” then stepped up with a colorful comment that, among other things, cleverly transformed “Serwer” into “Sewer”:
Vinczer was evidently so proud of the phrase “axe-grinding bandwagon” that he decided to paste it, and some further thoughts on the subject, over an old cheesecake picture of a woman grinding an axe. (See above.) Unfortunately, she is not actually seated upon a bandwagon, so I cannot award Mr. Vinczer full credit for his efforts here.
But my favorite comment of the bunch came from AVFM’s “managing editor” and “director of operations” and “possible buyer of fake Twitter followers,” Dean Esmay.
I can see that some of you are a little baffled, possibly because Serwer, who is both Jewish and a feminist, has never given any indication that he hates either Jews or women.
But Esmay, like many in the Men’s Rights community, seems to be fond of an argumentative trope that most of us outgrow in childhood: the old “I know you are but what am I?” ruse.
If you call an MRA a sexist, chances are good that he (or in some cases she) will call YOU a sexist — because, say, your insistence that rapists should be vigorously prosecuted is said to somehow infantalize women.
Or something like that; the details aren’t any more important to the MRAs making these accusations than they were to your jerky sibling when you were both kids. What’s important is that this little rhetorical maneuver puts you on the defensive.
But if AVFMers don’t have any good reason to say that Serwer hates Jews and/or women, they have come up with an excuse: Buzzfeed chose to illustrate Serwer and Katie Baker’s piece on Elam with a caricature of Elam modeled after a famous poster of Rosie the Riveter.
And so, apparently because the caricature of Elam was mildly unflattering and slightly exaggerated the size of his nose, the great minds at AVFM decided that it was equivalent to the viciously anti-Semitic caricatures of Jews featured in Nazi propaganda. And also somehow demeaning to women. It doesn’t make much sense to me.
Here’s how one AVFM fan tried to explain the accusation on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/tigerclaud/status/563888703026634752
Oddly, I don’t recall Esmay, a fervent supporter of #GamerGate, ever taking fellow #GamerGaters to task for literally repurposing neo-Nazi propaganda in their attacks on Anita Sarkeesian.
The “I know you are but what am I” attack can be confusing even to MRAs. Pity poor Suzy McCarley, AVFM’s “assistant managing editor” and head comment moderator, who, in her response to Esmay’s question, tried to attack Serwer as an anti-Semite who’s simultaneously sexist towards both women and men.
So Serwer hates Jews more than women, because half of all Jews are women, whom he hates, and the other half are men, whom he also hates, but possibly more than he hates women.
Driversuz, be careful: you might sprain something.
Also not condoning, but it’s a more understandable motive than “women won’t sex me!”
spindrift: Edward Gorey designed some “fusion” costumes for a 2005 production, which I like very much. Check them out here:
http://www.goreyography.com/west/PLAY/Mikado.htm
So Serwer “hates women” huh? I wish to deconstruct this.
The only connection I can see between the Buzzfeed article and (MRA style) “evidence” that Serwer doesn’t like women is that “We Can Do It” image. They either think that
1) Because PE’s face and body are reproduced to invoke a famous image of a female icon, they think that means “Ew, they made him look (kinda) like a girl!” which they think is misogynist because they are projecting their own juvenile brand of misogyny onto the image.
OR
2) Because PE’s face and body are reproduced to invoke a famous image of a female icon, and they know feminists despise PE, that must mean anyone who would do such a thing must…also hate women. QED.
Have I got that right? Neither makes sense, but then that isn’t necessary for these guys.
BTW, do writers even have anything to do with the pictures that illustrate their published pieces? I mean when the piece is not being published on their own blog? I don’t think that’s how it’s done in print media.
@Nequam
Those look interesting.
samantha
“@fruitloopsie – Wow. Why am I not surprised that they do nit get the point that the Scarecrow was always intelligent, the Tinman always loving and the Lion always courageous – they only had to realize it? Are the MRA’s really THAT stupid, vapid and venal? To say nothing of mean-spirited, cranky and in bad need of a LOOOOOONG time out?
Guess so. (howling to the moon and facepalming at the same time) Sigh.”
Yeah, MRA’s don’t do any reaserch they just see something and think ‘yep this looks good’ and place it in their memes and just make stuff up that just doesn’t make any sense. Men make up most of the stuff we watch and read and most of them have male protagonists that are heros.
But if ever men are presented in a bad way and not the main focus and good at all times then they’re suddenly opressed and misandry exists and will call those men who made those movies, shows, etc ‘manginas’
Bina
That poor woman I hope she does get help, what she did was wrong, but I understand too. Totally agree with Sunnysombrera it’s better than ‘women won’t give me whatever I want!’
I read about quite a few female serial killers and they are scary. There are shows and books about them because there are so few.
@Spindrift Considering that it’s literally satire of the British government dressed up as contemporaneous Japan, I’m not sure you can really get the Mikado away from the “white people in kimonos” thing.
I forgot about the main villian in the wizard of oz being a woman but never mind that since it’s ok for women to be bad (evidence in the comments)
Here’s a list of female serial killers including Aileen
http://www.ranker.com/list/famous-female-serial-killers/reference?page=2
I can think of several female serial killers (though there aren’t all that many that weren’t working together with male romantic partners). Amelia Dyer was one of the most prolific serial killers in history and Genene Jones was the partial inspiration for Annie Wilkes in “Misery” (both were nurses who killed infants). Elizabeth Bathory and Delphine LaLaurie are very famous historical serial killers, though there’s some historical dispute surrounding Bathory.
Oddly enough, no one knows much about whether LaLaurie’s husband was involved in the killings, though surely he must have known what was going on in the house.
I think there was a state-sponsored female serial killer in ancient Rome who favored poison.
Mass shooters, on the other hand, have been pretty much exclusively male. There’s been exactly one female mass shooter in the past three decades (this Mother Jones report from May 2014, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map lists 69 total killings, but regrettably that’s increased by now)
@ Suffrajitsu
It’s funny you raise the “must have known” point. Someone I know prosecuted Rose West and that was his “theory of the case” in t
Isidore13: Locusta of Gaul, but since most of her murders were hired I think she might be considered an assassin and not a serial killer.
…that trial.
(sorry, not good at touchscreens)
Isn’t Elizabeth Bathory started that ‘Bloody Mary’ story or am I thinking of a different woman? And There were rumors that she bathed in her victims blood or again is that a different serial killer I’m thinking of?
I still don’t understand the creator of those memes. He doesn’t do any research at all. Killing people is wrong (except if it’s in defense) and should be locked up, period. And the memes just in general:
http://youtu.be/yytbDZrw1jc
@Alan Robertshaw: I hadn’t heard of Fred and Rose West but it seems like they actually *were* partners in the murders? I actually can believe that it is possible for someone to be completely unaware of their spouse’s crimes, but Delphine LaLaurie’s husband would also have owned the slaves and lived in the same house, and while the facts about LaLaurie can be hard to separate from local lore, supposedly someone asked him about the slaves and he said something to the effect of “mind your own business”.
@ Suffrajitsu
You might find reading up on Sonia Sutcliffe interesting; touches very much on the point you raise.
They’re really starting to grasp at straws now. That’s just sad.
Yeah, the eyes in that image were scary accurate. And I do mean “scary”.
I don’t think the American Right has a monopoly on comparing people to Kim Jong-Il. Although the people of North Korea are legitimately held captive and terrorized by their leaders, whereas Paul Elam’s followers are just angry and dumb. If anything, the comparison is unfair to North Koreans.
Fruitloopsie — nope, that’s the one. How true any of that is, well, that’s another matter, but yeah, she was the one accused of all that.
—
“I think there was a state-sponsored female serial killer in ancient Rome who favored poison.”
There was another one who killed or had killed a handful of relatives in order to ensure her son became emperor, but I can’t fucking remember her name! So, sorta state sponsored, in that her family was the state, but definitely a serial killer.
—
The other thing with female serials is that nearly all of them are either “black widows” who kill a string of husbands/suitors, “angels of death” — nurses killing either infants or “mercy” killings, or working with a male partner. You almost never see the sort of sadist sexualized murders that are common among male serial killers. Very likely a matter of socialization, but nonetheless, clinging to a fictional story of not actually serial murder (if it were actually anything besides fiction) is just bizarre.
*female serial killers
I accidentally a word. I blame Darwin who kept me up all night banging his shell on the glass front of his enclosure.
@ Argenti
Livia perhaps?
On job titles: “Spokesgibbon”
I love me some Mikado. I saw the one with Eric Idle, too, at least a recording.
The Penzance movie with Kevin Kline and Angela Lansbury is a good one, too.
Argenti
Ok thanks
“clinging to a fictional story of not actually serial murder (if it were actually anything besides fiction) is just bizarre.”
Some of the memes are based on stuff that happened years ago like the wizard of oz, Thelma and Louise and Norman bates and all of those are fiction.
The memes mostly focus on what feminists and women do and the funny part (the part you just want to beat your head against a wall) is that other memes are so contradicting and hypocritical that it just makes you want to take some Advil.