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.
My two cents for Elam’s title:
– Asshole in Chief
– Papa Smurf
No, not Papa Smurf! Sure he may be the patriarchal leader of a group that’s mostly male with a few token women, but still that’s my childhoo-hoo-hoo-hood!
May I rather nominate Gargamel (“Gargamelam,” if you like), with Dean Esmay as Azrael?
@markb:
It’s certainly a step up but it’s hardly there. It’s still about the standard ‘women/girls problems’ (marriage), and she’s a princess, and I’d say most importantly they still make it an issue within the plot that she’s not properly ‘feminine’.
What I’d like to see are films where women/girls can be whatever without other characters pointing out how outrageous that is, where it’s just normal. I hate that my daughter feels she has to self-identify as a tomboy because that way she can do ‘boys things’.
She hates the colour pink and ‘girly’ stuff, and you can tell that in some cases it’s not because she really feels that way, it’s because that’s what boys are like. I’d like to see the same for male characters – normalise reasonable behaviour, don’t genderise specific behaviours, it limits everyone to a 2 dimensional caricature of what they think other people think they should be.
@Proxieme: The costumes your kids are wearing in the last picture look great. 🙂 I’m considering going as one of the Lord of the Rings elves this year for Halloween. I know it’s a long time away, but since I’ll be busy with a heavy university schedule and part-time work, it might be a good idea to get started early haha.
Re female serial killers: In South Africa there was a famous serial killer called Daisy de Melker. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_de_Melker. She killed two husbands and a son, although convicted only for the murder of her son.
I recommend Caustic Soda’s Evil Dames in History. They also have Evil Dudes in History.
Which is a wonderful bit of characterization. Aang’s sweet and gentle and goofy, and that’s an example that is sorely needed, IMO.
It also leads to the second-best filler episode in the series, wherein Aang is so hung up over not being strong enough to beat the Fire Lord that he stops sleeping, and eventually starts tripping.
@lith
Someone over at Ms. pointed out that the villains in TS3 (Lotso, the clown, and the baby) turn to evil after being rejected by a girl. Both Toy Story 2 and 3 depict girls as consumers who either heartlessly toss toys aside for the next shiny thing (makeup and boys), or simply replace one bear with another. Their behavior contrasts with college-aged Andy, who can hardly bear to part with his childhood companions. It’s as if they don’t believe that girls can be as imaginative, loyal, and bonded to their toys as girls.
Maybe that’s reading a little too much into it, but Pixar really needs to do a better job with female characters and stop feeding the stereotypes.
Re: the earlier Miyazaki discussion, my boys love “My Neighbor Totoro”, which has two strong, believable female protagonists. And a catbus!
http://sailormoonnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/my_neighbour_totoro_cat_bus_running.jpg
Whoops, that sentence should have said “It’s as if they don’t believe that girls can be as imaginative, loyal, and bonded to their toys as boys.”
I kept my favorite childhood doll. I can’t part with her. She’s dirty and her arms are missing but I love her anyway. Her name is Jingle Bells because she was a Christmas present.
Kootipatra
..what?
http://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0dpztWOBN1rqfhi2o1_500.gif
Wow Mras have to be from another planet. I don’t mind if there was a book or TV show that talks to boys about healthy masculinity but seriously the stupid is off the charts and no matter what you do the MRAS are not happy they will whine for not getting everything they want and have to be about them 24/7. Girls getting anything is Misandry it seems.
“Yeah, but we had to write all of those stories ourselves.”
Forbid women from writing or make women make up a male name to sell her books easier and now men are complaining why women didn’t write as much as they did. Well of course there’s Harry Potter that would proberly blow his mind.
I think I lost a couple brain cells reading all that. Ok calm down Fruitloopsie just think of the kitties.
http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/6300000/The-Aristocats-Wallpaper-the-aristocats-6370051-1024-768.jpg
Proxieme
Those costumes are awesome
Buttercup: but at the end all the toys are given to a girl. I really think too much is being read into the film here. I reckon the only reason characters like Lotso and even Jessie are abandoned by girls is because there are few human characters and they wanted a gender balance.
Also, you’re forgetting about Sid in TS1.
I hate to admit it, but even Pixar has a gender imbalance with only one movie to date that actually had a female protagonist (as opposed to female deuteragonists like Dory, Elastigirl, or EVE) and that one was about a princess. Not that there’s anything wrong with princesses per se, but Brave is still pretty clearly intended to “appeal to girls”; male is still default. That’s one of the reasons I have really high hopes for Inside Out (and I still do, though I did think the trailer with the mom and dad’s heads were weirdly 90s sitcom stereotypes.)
RE: rape in Greek myths: they were actually pretty equally blasé about gods raping both men and women (Ganymede and Hermaphroditus also come to mind), but mortal women were got raped by ‘heroes’ pretty often too (see: Theseus, Achilles, and Orion)
It’s been said before by someone but I’ll say it again: Princess Nausicaa is the best princess in film hands down. Haven’t seen Mononoke so I can’t comment.
Which brings me to a new thought: female representation in anime/ Japanese animation films? It seems to vary wildly and I don’t think all of it is bad. One of my favourite animes/mangas is Elfen Lied where there is only one man out of five characters (six in the manga but the sixth girl is a really odd vapid character clearly designed to appeal to some sort of weird fetish). Apart from her I think the creators did a good job of the characters. (That’s not why I like it though, I like it because of the awesome story and premise).
I kept my toys ever since I was born, at least I don’t blow up my toys or ‘play surgery’ with them like sid did. There was a little girl in the 3rd movie who was very imaginative and attached to her toys.
I do miss the toys like little Bo Peep but she wasn’t in it because she was porcelain so she might break. I do like the baby, he is so cute and when he said ‘momma’ at the near end my heart sank.
I heard about a theory that andy’s mom might be Jessie’s original owner because she kept the hat from when she was younger. But it could just be a theory.
Sunnsombrera
I wanted to watch Nausicaa but I haven’t got around it yet. I heard it was great I really do like Miyazaki films, the ones that I watched were Princess Mononoke, castle in the sky and spirited away.
Nausicaa’s flying scenes are pretty beautifully animated, feels like there’s real weight to the character. And her squirrelfox thingy is super cute.
Andy’s cowboy hat in TS1 looks like Jessie’s, but lacks the ribbon around the crown.
It was my impression that the movies said that kids like Andy and the girl he gives his toys to at the end are rare.
But TS3 also says there’s a time to put aside your toys. Andy was going to take Woody to college with him.
I agree that Pixar needs a better mix.
@fruitloopsie, I’d say those were among the best Miyazaki films, and I encourage you to watch Nausicaa. I have the newer one with Patrick Stewart on the dub cast.
I think I’m going to pull it out and watch it.
Seen most Miyazaki films but I gotta agree I’m happy he has so many well crafted female protagonists. Even the female dual protagonists are cool, like Fio in Porco Rosso, who is also a plane mechanic and engineer.
Falconer
“Andy’s cowboy hat in TS1 looks like Jessie’s, but lacks the ribbon around the crown.”
Maybe it was torn off? That would make me so happy if andy’s mom is jesse’s owner. Speaking of toy story there is going to be a 4th one in 2017.
“I encourage you to watch Nausicaa.”
::writes Nausicaa on ‘Movies that I want to watch list’:: and done.
@fruitloopsie Heard that theory too, but I think it’s been debunked. For one thing, Jessie doesn’t recognize Andy’s mom as her original owner, and vice versa. Also, I think the script refers to her as “Jennifer” rather than “Emily” (although you never learn her name in the films). And as someone on HuffPo pointed out, it would destroy Jessie’s story arc – she’s trying to work through her issues of being abandoned, and it would be too neat and pretty to subvert that by reuniting her with her original owner.
I had to throw out a decapitated Jessie doll recently (twin 1 had played too roughly with it and even after three repair attempts, the glue just wouldn’t hold any more). I felt horribly, horribly guilty about it. Thanks, Pixar.
Where’s Andy’s and Molly’s dad? MISANDRY!!
Buttercup
Bummer and yeah it would be too cliche but it’s still a nice thought though.
“I had to throw out a decapitated Jessie doll”
Double bummer