A few days before alleged “men’s human rights” website A Voice for Men held its first convention last summer, the site’s founder and head boy Paul Elam put up a post imploring the alleged human rights activists planning to attend the event not to go around calling women bitches and whores and cunts, because the news media would be there, and this might make his little human rights movement look bad.
I’m paraphrasing here; Elam was a teensy bit more euphemistic, telling his followers that anyone caught “trash-talking women, men, making violent statements … anything that can be used against us” would get a very stern talking-to and, if they persisted, would be asked to leave.
Elam’s warning didn’t stick. Indeed, the woman in charge of publicity for the event – you may know her as JudgyBitch or Janet Bloomfield, neither of which is her real name – went on a bit of a Twitter rampage, happily denouncing critics of the group as, yep, “whores.”
As GQ magazine’s long-awaited, finally published account of the conference makes abundantly clear, JB wasn’t the only one who broke Elam’s rule. Elam himself broke it, as did, apparently, almost everyone who came within shouting distance of GQ correspondent Jeff Sharlet, and the infractions went well beyond slurs and “bitch make me a sammich” jokes.
So I present to you The 5 Creepiest Details from GQ’s Account of AVFM’s Conference Last Summer
1) The Men’s Rights Activist who boasted that he would have disowned his daughter if she had pressed charges against the man she said raped her.
Af a convention afterparty, the man in question told this little story to Sharlet, Elam, and a few others:
When one of his daughters came home one night and said she’d been raped, he said, “Are you fucking kidding me?” Sitting with us, he hikes his voice up to a falsetto in imitation: ” ‘Oh, I just got raped.’ ” He laughs. There’s a moment of silence. A bridge too far? “I told her if she pressed charges, I’d disown her.”
Elam, whose attention has drifted, grins through his beard. “That’s good fathering,” he says.
2) The presentation on male suicide in which the presenter referred to a woman’s alleged propensity for “cocoa penis puffs,” by which he evidently meant black penises.
Speaking about male suicide and the troubles faced by returning veterans, conference speaker Terrence Popp asked the men in the room to
“imagine coming back from war to find out your wife, I’m trying to think of a good way to say this, but, uh, you know, went cuckoo for cocoa penis puffs.” I think Popp, who is white, means the wife in question had sex with a black man. “Crazy for some Rice Krispies treats,” he continues, “and a couple Polish sausages thrown in there.”
3) The Men’s Rights Activist/sex offender who thinks the age of consent should be 12, because “I would rather err on the side of 12-year-olds having sex than on the side of ruining men’s lives.”
4) Sage Gerard’s “unconsensual hug.”
GQ’s Sharlet brought his friend Blair along with him to the convention, where the 26-year old evidently attracted a good deal of attention from the men there, receiving, Sharlet says, “several marriage proposals” (presumably unserious) and some hands-on attention from AVFM’s “Collegiate Activism Director” Sage Gerard, including what Blair later described as “the most unconsensual hug I have ever known.”
If Blair’s account of her encounter with Gerard is any indication, the AVFM collegiate organizer has been reading up on pickup artistry; in addition to a good deal of touching – what PUAs call “kino” – he tried to “isolate” her by drawing her away from the crowd to … write a poem. (His idea.)
Here’s how Sharlet, relying on Blair’s notes, described what happened after their awkward hug:
Sage loosens his grip. “I apologize for dragging you away,” he says. “I wasn’t going to feel okay until I talked to you.” He warns her not to send mixed messages. For instance, she shouldn’t put her hand on a man’s knee if she doesn’t want to have sex with him. Sage puts his hand on Blair’s knee. This is not a mixed message, he wants her to understand. She’s here, in the VFW. She’s taken the red pill. She needs another hug. He needs to give it to her.
Blair, I should note, is not the only one to report creepy, predatory behavior on the part of conference attendees.
5) Rape jokes, rape jokes, and more rape jokes.
I’ll just mention this one. When Sharlet arrived at the conference afterparty with Blair, who had successfully managed to escape Gerard’s unconsensual embraces, Elam asked her a question:
“I’m curious,” Elam says. “What did your friends think when you told them you were coming here?”
“To be honest?” Blair asks. Elam nods. She says, “I had friends who said I’d get raped.”
Blink. You can almost see the struggle in Elam’s bones: Play the nice guy? Or the perv? No question. “All right!” he booms, swinging his arms together. “Let’s get started!”
Jazz winces.
“Get the video camera!” Factory yells at his girlfriend, who giggles weakly.
I should be very clear here: At no point does it seem like Elam or Factory is actually going to rape Blair. We know they’re joking. Just a couple of middle-aged guys joking around about rape with a young woman they’ve never met before in a hotel room at one in the morning.
You can read the rest of Sharlet’s account of this groudbreaking human rights conference here. And you should.
This dude is literally arguing that raping teenage girls is a man’s human right.
And Elam thinks that mocking your daughter who’s just been raped an threatening to disown her if she presses charges is “good parenting.”
Welp, I’m done. I’m off to find some brain bleach.
http://animals.ekstrax.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/funny-baby-animals-picture-11.jpg
We need some cat action:
Check out the matching fur.
…they can’t seem to conceal the awful, even when they are trying…
Here’s Levi demonstrating how he got his name:
http://nequam.xepher.net/images/levi/namesake.jpg
And we wonder why Paulie’s own daughter finally said “Fuck it, I’m outta here” when it came to him.
Actually, we don’t wonder at all.
Oh my GOD that is brilliant the comment section is filled with the agony of their butthurtness hahahaha
Wasn’t their a furor when Lindy West left Jezebel, to the glee of MRAs insisting she’d been fired, only for them to lose their shit when it turned out she was hired by GQ? I haven’t followed up that story so I could be wrong, but if *GQ* is too extremist feminazi #killallmen for the MRAs, that’s something. (Not saying they’re chauvinist–I haven’t read GQ much so I wouldn’t know–but as a mainstream men’s magazine, it’s really not the first thing I’d think of when thinking “radical feminist agenda.”)
There’s so much awful depressing shit here that I don’t even want to dwell on it long enough to comment on, but lemme just say, that caption is so fitting. Elam’s just as out of touch with reality as Norma Desmond, except not sympathetic enough that one of his three spouses would still care about him. And Norma, at least, was actually a bigshot once.
Ugh, THERE, goddammit. Not their.
These are the same people who are holding a “Rape Culture Doesn’t Exist” seminar at KSU on March 13.
QC is actually making inroads into progressive investigative journalism. Last year, Jeff Sharlit published a piece on Russia’s crackdown on LGBT people in GQ because they were willing to work with in on an in-depth, long-form peace. If you haven’t read it, here it is, but it is brutal:
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201402/being-gay-in-russia
The typo monster is out in force today 🙁
I Google “Jeff Sharlet GQ Twitter”, and the #4 result (below his Twitter, his contributor page on GQ, and the article on the AVFM conference) is “GQ’s Jeff Sharlet pimps out Blair Braverman for clickbait”, on A Voice for Men. That’s the best they came up with as way of rebuttal–using the inflammatory words “pimp” and “clickbait”. Not actually denying the (damning) quotes and anecdotes in the article.
Why no, that’s not racist at ALL! And no ethnic stereotyping there, either!
…Hey, why are all the dogs in the neighborhood suddenly barking their heads off?
Reblogged this on Dreams of the Shining Horizon and commented:
Jesus Christ.
*Takes a moment to gain composure*
You really should take a few minutes and read the whole thing, but if you only have time to check out the high points, this is what you need to see.
God, the Honey Badger part of the article. So, once again the “girls” who “cry rape” are dishonest lying liars accusing poor, innocent men of crimes they did not commit, but when a man tells a similar story of nigh-sexual assault, it’s proof of the evil, predatory nature of women.
I’m getting so sick of MRAs and their criminal brofiling.
I feel like this is an appropriate post to link to http://theghostofyourliess.tumblr.com/post/46274373034/mens-rights-activists
I hereby nominate this bit of creepiness for a dishonorable mention. Because sexually propositioning a co-worker out of the blue isn’t sexual harassment at ALL, either.
I found this published by one of Sharlit’s friends:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121138/mark-driscoll-and-macho-christianity
It is comparing Driscoll-esque “macho Christianity” to pick-up artistry. It is pretty interesting.
And yet, they claim that the legal system shafts men. Does that sound like a shafted guy to you? If his wife had killed him in self-defence, she sure as hell would not be out in five years or less. She’d be in for life.
And no, Dan, you’re not a creepy little man at all, either!
Except that Paulie is six-foot-eight and nearly 300 pounds, and looks nothing like Michelangelo’s David. And has made numerous entirely serious declarations about how he’d be only too happy to beat the shit out of a MUCH smaller woman.
The actual satire just writes itself…all over his sizable carcass.
Another thing I love about this article besides the hilarious comment section is how he openly links ELLIOT RODGER to these people. They are going to be flipping out about this for some time to come. HAHAHAHA
Also, gotta love those Honey Badgers with all their “examples” of women-raping-men. All their alleged examples happened in AFRICA.
No, ladies, that’s not racist of you at ALL!
(And not at all unverifiable, either.)
Oh, oh:
All the HELL TO THE NOPE. When I was in my teens, I may have drooled over the guys in Duran Duran, but if I’d ever gone to any of their concerts and been invited backstage only to be propositioned for sex, I would have fled from there in tears. And maybe vomiting. And definitely prepared to burn and trash all my band memorabilia, and try to forget I ever liked them. There’s a reason girls have crushes on unattainable men; it’s a transitional stage, and a safe one. They can admire and adore them with no danger of being taken advantage of.
And no, I don’t care how pizza-faced and squicky teenage boys generally are. I was disgusted and frustrated with about 99.9% of the guys I went to school with, but that was fine by me, too. That’s all the more reason for a girl to delay sex until she’s actually ready herself, and has found someone she knows she can trust. If that’s not a teenage boy, fine. Sex can wait until they both grow up a bit. Older men are infinitely worse than boys, because they’re taking advantage of a girl who thinks she’s grown up, but who they know full well is NOT.
No, grown men have no business “mentoring” teenage girls sexually. NONE.
And then there’s this, from the same Calabrese:
COOL STORY, BRO. Ever consider writing a Penthouse Letter? Christ, no wonder he’s one of those “old enough to bleed, old enough to breed” types who want to see the sex-offender registry trashed. He fucking belongs on it.
I think the title should be changed to: Sharlet on SHARTlets