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.
Jeff Sharlet is IMO one of the best journalists around. He wrote an excellent book on the shadowy Washington religious group called The Family which supports many extreme right-wing causes and, for example, was seriously involved in promoting the law in Uganda which calls for life in prison for gay men (and originally called for the death penalty for gays). He gave a talk here in Concord about his project to interview gay people in Russia, and his next project is interview men in Sing Sing. (Something that maybe the MRAs would be interested in if they really cared about the plight of men.)
I thought he did an excellent job of writing about the clowns while keeping a fairly straight face.
Aaaand I just now got to the comments, and there’s Attila the Hopeless Hun, whining about human rights.
My heart, it bleeds. (Probably as a result of all the stomach acid from the suppressed urge to barf.)
@Bina: Have you ever considered what sort of thinking would lead to someone choosing Attilla as his son’s name, and what effect that might have on him ?
…Yeah, I don’t think anyone’s after your Lucky Charms, dude.
The MRM seems to consist mainly of guys sitting around vying to see who can come up with the most offensive over-the-top synonyms for standard sexist and racist insults. If Heartiste’s ornate drivel was translated back into plain English, you’d get “racial slur, that man over there has female genitalia, racial slur, girls are icky, eww vaginas”. Take away the purple style, and it’s nothing but a stream of playground name-calling. There’s no critical thought behind it.
How can one group of people possibly be so delusional? I’m dying at the stupidity over here.
Oh, I’m sure he’s actually inordinately proud of it. Just like he is about that fitness award that got lost in the mail so he can’t hang it on his wall for all the laydeez to fawn over, boo hoooo sniffle.
I guess no one ever told him that during World War I, “Hun” was an ethnic slur levelled at the Germans, and one which intimated that they were genetically inferior to the “more evolved” Brits. (Who, if you get right down to it, are also Germans.)
“…they can’t seem to conceal the awful, even when they are trying…”
It’s even worse… it’s actually far more likely that they are indeed concealing the awful. That they are intentionally and carefully concealing the awful. AND THIS IS THE SHIT THAT THEY CONSIDER ACCEPTABLE.
Nope nope nope nopity nopety nope.
When I was a teen, anyone more than five years older was automatically “dadzoned”. At that age, even a couple years’ difference is huge.
Second of all, I preferred being with guys of a similar level of (in)experience, because it took the pressure off me to feel like I had any clue what I was doing. And hey, girls like charting new waters too. I didn’t want some “sophisticated” older man making me feel like a hick.
And third of all, what Bina said about crushes. Young girls tend to have Mary Sue fantasies, of the kind where Justindward Biebercullen (or whoever) is so overwhelmed by your snowflake incredibleness that he composes love songs for you and climbs into your bedroom window just to stare at you while you sleep and is never on a different page sexually. That type of fantasy doesn’t translate well into reality, particularly when that reality is an older man whose goal is to pressure young girls into doing things they’re not ready for.
I’ve been trying to come up with some response to the paedophile, but I was raped by a paedophile when I was 15 and my way with words sometimes shuts down on that particular topic. So, I’m just going to post one of my favourite GIFs and be done with it.
http://31.media.tumblr.com/0e61c64dc2674f709dcdf41fe6a864d3/tumblr_mjmfbi4ofD1r83ei3o1_250.gif
I think it still gets my point across.
omg i go to college with this Sage creep!!! I’m a woman in his major (it’s CS, btw)
His views on men’s rights were… previously noted
Okay, the “All anti-MRA commenters are the same person using sockpuppets” thing is fucking hilarious. No evidence given, no arguments why that particular comment is wrong… its just “There is clearly only one person in the world who opposes us, and you are it.”
Or possibly, “A man says you’re lying, therefore you are.” Which seems to be their take on rape cases, so…
The cocoa penis guy seems to also be working off the assumption that the military is comprised of entirely white men. That might be true in many countries, but in the US it’s 25.4% non white. The percentage of the US military that is black is higher than the percentage of the general US population that is black. Enlisted forces are 14% female and officers are 15.3% female. White men may still be the biggest demographic in the US military, but it isn’t the only one. It’s pretty annoying for them to try to co opt it for themselves.
Forgot to link my source. http://statisticbrain.com/demographics-of-active-duty-u-s-military/
Bina | February 25, 2015 at 9:24 pm
As a Hufflepuff, I’d like to kindly ask for those ladies to step right the fuck off of the honey badger shtick. Git. Shoo. Go. YOU DISHONOR MY NOBLE HOUSE. NO POINTS FOR YOU OR YOUR ILK.
As someone who was raped by an adult man as a young girl: Anyone who says this or agrees with it needs to forever be barred from going anywhere near a school. Ever. Three hundred yards, at the very least. And they need signs put up in their yards or front windows, or on their front doors. You should NOT be around any child, let alone a young girl.
These men are so gross. “I want to take advantage of a young girl’s naive nature and coax her into having sex with me before she’s properly aware of what sex is because I’m a proud pedophile, I just don’t want to be accused of raping a minor!”
http://i.imgur.com/MHuW96t.gif
MRAs: fighting for the dignity of men and boys.
https://twitter.com/JeffSharlet/status/570425578764967936
I got to the third page of the article and I honestly hoped this was like one of those articles they have on Cracked, where it starts out with a fairly reasonable concept and slowly gets more and more ridiculous and implausible until it’s apparent that the article was a joke. Like this one: http://www.cracked.com/blog/12-things-every-teenage-boy-has-fantasized-about/
That talks about how teenage boys fantasize about winning the girl and humiliating bullies… and also about being a horse and winning the bullies and using horse karate on girls.
But no, this article is describing events that the journalist actually experienced, and the vast majority of comments consist of NO! MRAS FIGHT FOR MENS RIGHTS! CHILD SUPPORT! SUICIDE RATE!, not anything along the lines of “clearly none of that happened and MRAs would never be so crude as to make blatant rape jokes and all that other terrible stuff.
It shouldn’t surprise me, but I kind of expected MRAs to be more reasonable in meatspace, for some reason. A sliver of faith in humanity, perhaps.
Besides the sexism, that is another thing the MRAs have in common with Gamergate: they claim to be for fairly non-controversial issues (male suicide, journalistic ethics) but what they really care about is hating women. They use the other issues as cover, to attack anyone who calls them out on their misogyny.
@wordsp1nner
Just like how Tea Partiers claim to be about taxes and neo-Confederates claim to be about states’ rights.
My rule of thumb “Nobody actually gives a shit about ‘States Rights'” has served me well so far.
Oh, that article. That article. At once so hilarious and so horrifying.
Funny parts:
— All the MRAs peeing their pants with excitement at opportunity to deploy “security” against the hordes of screaming Valkyries who are totally going to come swarming over the hill any minute. Said security consists of the con volunteers (of course they ALL wanted to be security) wearing black T-shirts. After successfully turning away one woman who introduces herself at the door as a feminist, they get bored and tell everyone else to check themselves in.
— “Cuckoo for cocoa penis puffs.” Really dumb white supremacists crack me up even when they also terrify me.
— The He-Man Woman-Haters scrambling over each other to clumsily hit on the reporter’s friend. Also great: the Honey Badgers in the comments posting jealously about how she was totally into it.
— Charging a dollar for a cup of water.
— The romantic stylings of one Sage Gerard. “You wanted to hear more about rape? Ooh, you’re freaky.” PANTIES: SOAKED.
— Paul Elam’s dick-and-balls-shaped diagram of the manosphere. “Dark Enlightenment” is the shaft. And they say we’re cuckoo for cocoa penis puffs.
Scary parts:
— Everything else.
Not to mention that the main ‘states right’ involved in the U.S. Civil War was the right to affirm the ability to keep slaves.
The CSA Constitution, Article I, Section 9(4):
The CSA Constitution, Article IV, Section 2(1):
So, yeah, built into the CSA constitution was a restriction that no state could enact anything like the Personal Liberty Laws that would allow states to refuse to hand slaves back to their ‘owners’.
But sure, States’ Rights. Pull the other one.
Yeah, some “Libertarian” modern politicians act like the states can’t oppress people, only the federal government can. I’m used to their opinion that the private sector can’t be oppressive–it is stupid as fuck, but they seem to believe it.
But “States’ Rights”? I always translate that into “States’ Rights to be more oppressive than the Federal Government” inside my head. Works wonders. Slavery, abortion, gay marriage… it all fits.
All stripes of conservatism, but libertarianism especially, lean heavily on broad assertions, especially negatives, dogmatically accepted as foundational facts. Arguments are never provided for these statements; they’re just philosophical presuppositions. Even though in real life, they’re not only not proven, but extremely easy to disprove.
“Government can’t create wealth” is another one.
The full context for Mr. “Laughed at my daughter’s rape and threatened to disown her if she pressed charges” is, astonishingly, even worse:
…
Factory loves his children. He would have reacted differently if it had been what he in theory considers a legitimate claim, but—”if you don’t have videotape or forensic, a whole lot of bruises, I don’t give a fuck.”
Wait, what the fuck? Do you just expect her to have left the scene of the crime with video and forensic evidence on her or what? How the fuck would you even get forensic evidence if you didn’t at least fucking try to press charges?
That “factory loves his children” (no you don’t, you fucking insult to love and children) paragraph should be blockquoted, sigh.