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.
Sweden had a draft for men only until five years ago… During the last decades of the draft women could join the army too, but it was voluntary for them. Technically, all nineteen-year-old men were supposed to be drafted for at least six months (I think, I’m not positive about the amount of time) of mandatory army service. In reality, from the 1990:s and onwards, the need for soldiers was fairly low, so it was really easy to get out by faking some minor ailment.
I was looking for articles about women in masculine sports when I went to a “Return of Kings” article about the all-women sports show “We Need to Talk”. It has the usual “sports is a male preserve” vibe. You can read the article at http://www.returnofkings.com/53007/we-need-to-talk-is-the-latest-invasion-of-women-into-a-male-space. Maybe David Futrelle can write an article, with mockery included, about it.
@PussyPowerTantrum:
I’ve been following that argument with interest. I see you’re only interested in “terrifying women” into… well I’m not sure what really, because I thought scaring women into staying indoors and never imbibing alcohol was one of their tactics.
But apparently you should stop it because telling women actual rape statistics may cause collateral damage. So I can’t work out if that’s a reason for artificially inflating male rape statistics, because they can take the hit?
I have to admit I left the GQ thread feeling less informed than when I went in.
@Kootiepatra:
Why thank you, and good. I think the thread’s pretty much over now, apparently having no leg to stand on and only accusations of sock puppetry to ‘fall back on’ (or start with) makes for pretty repetative commentary and nothing interesting to respond to. I imagine they consider that a win – the last word is after all more important than having a single useful thing to say.
I think I’ll just continue not caring about the gender thing and bring it up depending on circumstance. They’d probably be mortified at finding they’d called a guy ‘sweetheart’ but I really can’t be bothered, it makes no difference to the words I’m saying.
How many times can they say “women are invading a male space” before they go “huh, men sure have a monopoly on a lot of spaces?”
I don’t think they’ll ever have that ‘red pill’ moment.
Of course Elam’s response doesn’t do anything but go after the character and writing skills of Sharlet. He doesn’t address the horrid things said. Because he can’t. So Paulie thinks it’s ridiculous that Braverman might have feared rape in his hotel room (even though manospherians are fond of telling us that’s what we should expect if we go anywhere with a man). Fair enough. What about the comment he made about Factory displaying good fathering by mocking his daughter’s confession that she’d been raped? Does he have anything to say about that? And doesn’t the rape apologia on display suggest that the fears Blair’s friends had were entirely reasonable?
Sorry if that was word salad. I haven’t had coffee yet.
“Loves his children”? Uh, NO. That is not the voice of a caring, protective parent, there. That is the voice of a man who isn’t fit to be a father, or even a fly-by-night sperm donor. That’s a man whose daughters should run away from home as soon as they can, as fast and as far as their feet will take them. And never look back.
Also, ugh — do you suppose that on the off chance they DID catch a video of themselves being assaulted, he would whack off to it? I wouldn’t put THAT past him, either.
Aaaand now I need brain bleach. Badly.
@WWTH:
Sounded good to me 🙂
Or horrifying, if you count the actual content.
Just. Indefensible.
So it sounds like his daughters have been raped a number of times if “they compete” is anything to go by.
Of course we’re assuming he really has daughters and isn’t making them up just to make a point. Which I can’t find any reason to believe they wouldn’t, they’ve hardly proved themselves trustworthy or unwilling to lie to achieve their aim.
I don’t like feeling like that (lacking in trust), it makes me sad.
And then there’s the alternative – that it’s true – which is just plain horrible. Ugh, I come out of this one feeling horrible all over.
@Bina
I agree. Loving your children would require some amount of compassion when they tell you that something horrible happened to them.
Is a dance interlude sufficient brain bleach? This just went up yesterday after being in production for almost a year.
PS. I’m wearing red shoes and have a red flower in my hair.
Bina – I think Sharlet was being sarcastic when he said ‘Factory’ loves his children – the article is peppered with it. And I think you are right, he would have a wank to a video of rape, even his own daughter.
Regarding the rape jokes:
Guys, don’t do that.
RE: Bina
Ewwwwww. And speaking as someone from a family with at least thirty years of incest, I can say with absolute certainty that no. Grown men are NOT better lovers. The ‘substance’ they’re interested in is way worse.
Also, seriously, teenage guys? Get a bad rap. We knew a lot of really nice teenage guys when we were kids! (And we certainly knew teenage guys who liked being around us for reasons other than wanting to bone us.) I think most people who actually interact with young folks know that a lot of them are really nice.
“Loves his children”? Uh, NO.
You know, this is why I love having a good definition of love. I follow bell hooks’s definition: care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust. Because it honks me off when people claim ‘love’ as an excuse for reprehensible behavior.
RE: Charles RB
the “Free My Friend Humbert Humbert”
Were he still alive, Nabokov would probably be fit to scream. I had to do some study of Lolita for English a couple times, writing a paper on Lolita’s voice, and I seem to recall Nabokov stating outright that no, Humbert is TERRIBLE. He’s not supposed to be a good guy. (And it drove me nuts how so many people seemed to BUY INTO Humbert’s opinion of himself, and mistake character’s view for author. It seemed pretty clear to me that Humbert was NOT supposed to be a hero!)
I know that the culture of the US is quite different to the UK, but I really cannot imagine anywhere where teen girls have started competing with one another for the most extreme false rape accusations. I think that if this were a ‘thing’ on the scale that this disgusting individual is implying the mainstream press might have got hold of it.
Is there some ghastly teen film with that as its theme? The Manosphere get a lot of their ideas about the world from fiction, so it wouldn’t surprise me.
What I consider the worst crime is the rape jokes weren’t even funny. If you’re going to make tasteless jokes, then at least have the decency to make them actually worth offending people over.
Humbert Humbert is an unreliable narrator; one gets that pretty much off the bat, if one is reading with any sort of comprehension at all. The idea that Lolita is justification for molesting preadolescent girls is just a steaming pile of NOPE.
Dance is good brain bleach! And my kitty just came in and brain-bleached me but good with torbie headbutts, polydactyl paw-pats, and awesome plume-tail thwackings. Now she’s rubbing everything in sight and purring her stealth purr.
And yeah, echoing the “not all teenage boys” thing. I knew quite a few good ones back in the day. ‘Course, about two-thirds of them were probably gay, which may explain why they were my friends and there was never any pressure for more than that from any of them. Goddess bless gay guy friends!
There wasn’t actually a shirt saying “free humbert humbert.” That was invented by mammoth commenters. There was a sign saying to free some real, actual sex offender who was friends with Calabrese. I don’t remember his name. I doubt that most of them have heard of Humbert Humbert.
This makes me so mad that if I think about it any more, I will violate the site rules.
I must think about kittens. Kittens, kittens, kittens. There that’s better.
http://youtu.be/OtRRUEs3o0c
Ironically the majority of voices in support of abolishing the Military Selective Services Act came from multiple feminist groups, including the National Organisation for Women, back in the 1980s when the case was going to court*. But the Men’s Rightsters won’t tell you that. Facts upset their narrative.
*I do apologise. I think there was one men’s rights group on board as well.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=UDFPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=nwIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6777,7767318&dq=men%27s-rights+conscription&hl=en
And hi LBT! It’s so good to see you here again, I’ve missed your comments muchly 🙂
Hi Misha! *waves*
RE: Bina
The idea that Lolita is justification for molesting preadolescent girls is just a steaming pile of NOPE.
Yeah, no. I’ve had to read and analyze Lolita. It’s about a pedophile who marries a woman to get access to her daughter, and when the woman dies, he keeps her as his property, with the fantasy of breeding a new generation of Lolitas that he can bang when his current model gets too old. Then another pedophile steals Lolita, she eventually escapes THAT guy, finds a decent guy to marry as a teenager, and tells Humbert Humbert to leave when he comes back for her.
Really, if you focus on the actual EVENTS and ACTIONS in the book, rather than Humbert’s constant feeeeeelings, it’s about a child escaping her narcissistic rapist. If people actually believe Humbert is the hero, then they’ve completely missed the point of the damn book. It’s like reading A Modest Proposal and thinking, “Eating babies is a great idea!”
RE: Orion
There was a sign saying to free some real, actual sex offender who was friends with Calabrese.
🙁 You made it worse.
Also, I offer Sneak’s favorite brain bleach:
My dad was drafted into the Serbian army for a few months when he was younger (out of high school or out of university, I don’t know). He boasts that he learned how to take a bath with only a cup of water and that he was the top of his class in shooting a revolver. Useless facts, but fun to think about.
I am so tired of them deliberately misinterpreting the CDC study.
I always read Lolita as a horror novel with an unreliable narrator. Kinda like if Dracula had narrated Dracula. I can’t understand how anyone can read that book, or even have the most passing of familiarity with it, without understanding that Humbert is the villian,
Sort of how I don’t get how they keep deliberately misinterpreting that CDC study, even after the CDC researchers themselves issued a statement correcting them.
They are either not incredibly bright, or so blinded by their ideology that they can’t process information that contradicts it. Or both.
More brain bleach:
RE: sparky
A lot of people read the book that way! It’s so bizarre! Like, just trying to look up the quotes I remembered from Nabokov on it got me a bunch of academic wankery about Lolita ‘seducing’ Humbert and not being truly innocent. (Man, I do NOT miss academia.)
Like, even when I first attempted the book in high school, I realized that Humbert was not supposed to be okay. I thought the whole point of the book was to take this terrible human being and make him charismatic and charming enough to be magnetic, to break the old stereotype of pedophiles being obviously odious.
re Orion: “There wasn’t actually a shirt saying “free humbert humbert.””
Yeah, that was me being derogatory about the two men in question
Re: Humbert — Wasn’t one of his most famous quotes “You can always tell a murderer by his fancy prose style”, or something like that? And of course, Humbert had a pretentious, wankish prose style, all right. And he IS a murderer. As well as, of course, a child molester.
And in other news, today I learned that “Parental Alienation Syndrome” is not a real thing. That it was made up from nothing. Al-Jazeera had a feature on it blowing the whole thing sky-high. This knocks a huge pin out from under the Fathers’ Rightzers.
Today, in short, is shaping up to be a not-bad day.
My days shaping up okay too. I got paid even though payday is technically Friday. I literally had 5 dollars to live on this week and had been eating nothing but cheap frozen burritos and cheese sandwiches. I celebrated by spending a bit of money on frivolous junk. Chips and Red Bull. Yay, trashy goodness!