As the news broke this morning that the Germanwings plane crash may have been a deliberate murder/suicide caused by the flight’s co-pilot, readers of the leading Men’s Rights website A Voice for Men were greeted by a post from site founder Paul Elam titled “A little blood in the mix never hurt a revolution.”
The headline on Elam’s post, a muddled mess that’s mostly a response to recent infighting amongst MRAs, recalls a disturbing post of his from several years ago titled “How to Build a Man Bomb.” (Archived here.)
Ostensibly a warning about the cost of ignoring male rage, it read a lot more like a threat.
[W]e are building a man bomb. And when this one detonates it could make the American race riots [of the 1960s] look like a Thanksgiving Day parade.
The misandric Zeitgeist, the system of feminist governance that most are sill loathe to acknowledge is about to head toward its inevitable and ugly conclusion, and the results of that will inflict another deep wound on the psyche of the western world.
The post continues on for some time in this melodramatic vein:
The ranking members of the matriarchy, like social terrorists, are partnering with and guiding government toward the inevitable explosion, and when it goes off they will be the first to point the finger at men, even at MRA’s, for the fallout.
It won’t help them, though. Because whatever tragic end this comes to, it will not be at the hands of MRA’s, but in spite of our efforts to prevent it.
All this would be a little more believable as a “warning” if Elam and other MRAs didn’t devote most of their energy to cultivating exactly this kind of male anger — and in some cases lionizing those who have acted out this rage.
The problem goes well beyond the few — on the fringe of even the already extreme Men’s Rights movement — who glorify misogyny-driven mass murderers like Marc Lepine or Elliot Rodger. Or those “Red Pillers” who declare that if they were going to kill themselves they would take some woman with them.
No, the problem comes when those in the mainstream of the Men’s Rights movement celebrate men like Tom Ball, a troubled father who set himself on fire on the steps of a New Hampshire courthouse in an attempt, as he explained in a lengthy manifesto, to inspire other men “to start burning down police stations and courthouses” to protest what he saw as a misandrist court system.
He followed this call to arms with instructions on how to prepare effective Molotov cocktails, and a lengthy plea to men to “finish the job” he had started:
There will be some casualties in this war. Some killed, some wounded, some captured. Some of them will be theirs. Some of the casualties will be ours.
Now, nobody wants to get killed. But let us look at your life. You are broke after paying child support. … Face it boys, we are no longer fathers. We are just piggy banks.
So you are not losing anything by picking up the Molotov cocktail. …
I only managed to get the main door of the Cheshire County Courthouse in Keene, NH. I would appreciate it if some of you boys would finish the job for me.
In other words, Ball was a would-be suicide/murderer who hoped others would do the murdering for him.
Ball’s manifesto was posted on AVFM’s “Activism” section for several years, taken down only after the Boston Marathon, and he was widely hailed by others in and around the Men’s Rights movement.
Helen Smith — an AVFM ally, the author of Men on Strike, and the wife of “Instapundit” Glenn Reynolds — wrote that Ball’s
statement is not the ramblings of a madman, it is the mission of a warrior in some sense. He was fighting for his rights and for yours, if you are male. He was trying to bring some urgency to the male plight in this country … .
She somehow neglected to mention that he was trying to do this by urging men to firebomb courthouses and police stations.
It’s striking how often MRA manifestos shade into vague threats of violence. One recent case, of many: Jeremiah True, the MRA-adjacent Reed College student banned from the discussion section of one of his courses after unnerving everyone in the class with his rants on rape, warned in one recent online manifesto that “[i]f you exclude me from the campus, I will rain hell down upon you all.”
True’s melodramatic insinuations of apocalyptic retribution might be amusing if declarations like these didn’t so often precede actual violence.
Unfortunately, when they aren’t making vague threats like these, MRAs are often found offering ingenious excuses for actual murderers. In an online discussion of the case of Chris Benoit, a pro wrestler who killed his wife and his son before hanging himself, AVFM’s Alison Tieman (a.k.a. Typhonblue) suggested that men who kill their families were men “backed into a courner [sic].” In the case of Benoit, she wondered
what horrific thing this woman did to this man to make him snap like this? I know, I know… “blaming the victim”. But I’ve seen too many “victims” grinning and pulling strings in the back ground to really feel sorry for them any more.
Her solution to male murder/suicide?
It’s obvious from this that men need to step away from women and start developing a male society outside of the auspices of women. That way they can support eachother when they get kicked out of female-society.
Murder/suicide isn’t the result of “misandry,” of evil wives “grinning and pulling strings in the back ground,” of men being “kicked out of female society.”
All too often, it’s the result of aggrieved male entitlement, of old-school “macho” attitudes that teach men that any sort of failure (from sexual to financial) is shameful and that anger is the only acceptable emotion to show the world.
Unfortunately, the Men’s Rights movement does nothing to challenge any of these toxic notions, all of them legacies of patriarchal thinking. All too often, MRAs celebrate them, helping to make the world a more difficult place for men, and a more dangerous place for women and children.
Male rage is not part of the solution. It is part of the problem.
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My previous post on the Germanwings Flight 9525, and one “manospherean’s” appalling response to it, can be found here.
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David, you should be ashamed for using a tragedy like this to slander men’s rights activists. Can you provide one shred of evidence that this pilot was an MRA or that he even knew the movement existed?
The problem here David is that men aren’t angry enough. Everyone bends over backward when it comes to dealing with women’s issues but when it comes to problems that affect men including mental health issues, nobody cares. Men are worked to the bone, sometimes in dangerous conditions and not a thought is ever given to our health. I wouldn’t necessarily say feminists are at fault for this, but if they were really for equality like they say they are they would care about men’s health and from what I’ve seen they don’t. The only time they do care is when it results in violence against women. Anyway we men have a right to be angry about anti-male bias in society and we don’t need you sitting here telling us otherwise.
David, I think that this article is a step too far. Exploiting mass murder in an attempt to bolster your ego; is nothing short of sick and wrong.
@David:
“Rich, so you didn’t read the rest of the post, huh?”
Apparently, he, like Paul, never made it past the title that immediately set off his knee-jerk “must deny and deride” reaction.
Because if he did (make it past the title), he would have encountered Elam’s own words ever so smugly inciting violence in the very first paragraph of your post (“A little blood in the mix never hurt a revolution”).
But reading past the title requires too much mental stamina, the little of which that is available must be spent on denying and deriding, and of course derailing.
Pathetic little idiots.
@weirwoodtreehugger:
“How did I know feminists expecting rape allegations to be taken seriously would be the thing that Paul feels persecuted by.”
Manurespherians, unlike the rest of the cruel and unfeeling society, understand that prosecuting rape = oppressing male sexuality and just plain misandry.
Uh, no one said this guy was an MRA. We were saying that there’s quite a bit of male entitlement that causes this kind of violence to happen. Please read the whole article before you knee-jerk in the comments section.
Oh really? So all those men who beat women for not fucking them or agreeing to be prostitutes for them aren’t angry enough? Good golly gosh!
Mary Spears, a mother of three kids, was shot dead because she rejected a man’s advances.
Maren Sanchez was stabbed at her school when she declined a boy’s invitation to go to prom.
Christy Mack was brutally beaten and nearly raped by her ex-boyfriend.
And here’s an entire blog filled with stories of women who told a man no. Some lived, but some did not.
Y’all are angry enough. If you can’t handle a simple “no” without snapping and killing or brutally maiming someone, you are angry enough.
And when everyone and their dog does mental backflips to defend this behavior:
“Mary Spears should have just given him her number! What a stuck-up bitch!”
“Maren Sanchez should have just gone to prom with him and she wouldn’t have gotten hurt!”
“Christy Mack’s a porn star! She’s a slut! And she shouldn’t have dated a dangerous guy like that! What an idiot!”
Yeah, you want to be angry? How ’bout we get angry over the fact that men glorify this kind of behavior? That men glorify being violent and unemotional to the point where a life has to end because y’all can’t handle rejection?
Really? I haven’t seen the crusty ass old white dudes in Congress do jack chicken shit about giving women better access to birth control or making abortions safer.
I haven’t seen anyone outside of feminists giving two flying fucks about rape victims, male, female, or any other gender. (MRAs care only when they can use male rape victims as a way to silence female victims or anti-rape advocates, so they really don’t.)
I haven’t seen MRAs giving two flying fucks about anyone who died on that plane we’re discussing, and a lot of those passengers were women.
“I don’t see it, so it’s not happening!”
Feminist website talking about men’s mental health in the wake of Elliot Rodgers.
Feminist talking about men’s mental health after Conneticut shooting in 2012.
Geek Feminism Wiki on Toxic Masculinity
The Federalist talking about Toxic Masculinity
Yeah, but we feminists don’t give a shit about you or your mental health, amirite?
Ms. Magazine on Men’s Health
Ms. Magazine on Men’s Health (again).
And look! Male Feminists who care about men’s health too!
Oh, and side note:
9 Dangerous Jobs Women Do
5 women talk about the dangerous jobs they do
Another article on women in dangerous jobs like coal mining or gross jobs like sanitation work
And yet we still make less money than you do and you still don’t give a fuck about our health.
“I wouldn’t say feminists are to blame for this, but because they’re not tackling my particular pet issues in a way I deem fit or dropping everything else to deal with it, they obviously don’t care about it at all.”
Look, people are capable of caring about more than one topic at a time. And no, they don’t all have to be up front and center all the damn time for this to be true. Simply because we’re currently discussing one topic, or you only see feminists discussing a handful of topics, it doesn’t mean we don’t care about, or don’t wish to talk about others.
Some of us don’t have enough knowledge to tackle some of your pet issues, some of us don’t know where to start, and some of us don’t want to run into assholes like you.
If I were to carry my keys in one hand and put them down to sip some coffee, do my keys disappear? No. Object permanence is a thing.
One, we care all the damn time. See above.
Two, yeah, we care more when it results in violence against women. Because violence against women.
Come talk to me about “anti-male bias” when you’re getting murdered in the streets for telling a woman no. Come chat me up when Viagra isn’t covered by insurance, but birth control is. Come talk to us when men who kill women aren’t made out to be victims of some woman’s evil conniving ways.
Until then, get the fuck out.
“LIES AND SLANDER!” Cries the MRAmun. “Take down your article! How dare you disrespect a man who wants to make “Bash a Violent Bitch” month a thing (and then later claimed it was “satire”)! How dare you say that Elam is violent after he <a href="http://www.donotlink.com/dxe"?posted an article telling people to run down a prominent feminist writer in the road (and then hastily tried to cover it up with the lame "It's satire!" excuse, again)!? How very dare you claim that Elam cultivates anger when he deliberately made a fake website to steal away funds from the White Ribbon Organization, who help female (and male) victims of domestic violence because he thought they weren’t helping men enough?“
Yup, how could we possibly say such things?
To the concern trolls:
Read the post before commenting. You’d have a modicum credibility if instead of projecting your feelings you actually read the post and managed to address arguments presented in it. As it is, your misplaced outrage and faux concern only expose your irrationality.
I can’t even with these trolls. They’re not even funny.
Can we go back to man bashing, please? I feel like I haven’t been bashed in ages.
Dhag,
I don’t like being catcalled and I wish men didn’t do.
There. Happy? Have I successfully persecuted your male sexuality? 😀
@WWTH
But but but how am I supposed to catcall if I can’t catcall? Misandry!
What’s with all the 4 trolls?
Also, I love how quoting a bunch of MRA’s saying horrible shit about a tragedy is somehow “exploiting” it.
“Accurate quotes are MISANDRY!!”
@binjabreel – maybe they’re 4chan refugees?
They sound exactly like the people who, when you point out their bigotry, say “No, YOU’RE the racist for even noticing that!” And the people who, when you point out they’re being hurtful, call you a mean bully.
According to these trolls, pointing at a tree and saying “Look, a tree” makes you a tree. In fact, it makes you more of a tree than the original tree, and how dare you. You’re not supposed to observe or comment on the tree.
“While injuring your partner is reprehensible, in most legal circles he(she) who escalates an argument to a physical confrontation bears the brunt of the blame.”
Yup,gotta warned all the women out there not to provoke their husbands or boyfriends but if they can injured their men if the they’re the one who started it..
I see it as that fake politeness that the bad guys use in old western movies. They’re not just shooting at your feet, they are politely asking you to dance!
How are you people so ignorant that you mischaracterize the MRM so badly? Whereas I could easily find feminists who have stated truly hateful things (Kill all men tags, anyone), I dare you to find the same in the MRM thats in context. Truly, based on the actions of its members, feminism is a hate movement. Equality my ass.
“in the MRM thats in context.”
Hmm, can’t help thinking of a time that Tony Lambrianou (an enforcer for the Kray Twins) was interviewed…
“Now there was of course that time you nailed a man to the floor…”
“Hey, that incident has been taken totally out of context”
“Context”, such a nebulous word when it comes to the MRM. Right up there with “satire” and other words they don’t seem to understand.
@bledi-
Lol, you fucking fail. You know “kill all men” was started by 4chan trolls, right?
Also, until a woman shows up at a university with an assault rifle, you can go fuck right off at all.
@Dan Kasteray,
Yes, you were wrong. So was she, ofc, but men lecturing women about feminism is pretty much the gold standard of mansplaining so it really wasn’t your place.
Did you say the same thing to Paul Elam for the article quoted above? What about Vox Day? Or is it only “using a tragedy to further your own agenda” when non-MRAs do it?
Link please. Otherwise I’ll have to assume your pants are on fire, if you catch my meaning.
And yet you can’t seem to stop posting…
Ah, I see we’ve come to the “complains about being mocked on a mockery site” portion of the Troll Show. Is it me or is every episode of the Troll Show pretty much exactly the same?
Paul used LOL U TOOK WOMEN’S STUDIES
It’s not very effective…
If you think those three are the sum total of “modern feminism” you’re…well, about as dumb as we all thought you were, but thanks for being so upfront about it.
For someone who claims not to be an MRA, you sure do manage to hit all their talking points. But then, claiming not to be an MRA is also one of the talking points…
It already is; of course (and feminists have been saying so for decades); and on what planet?
And yet there is also a greater proportion of women than men below the poverty line (especially globally, but even in North America this is true). Underrepresented at the top + overrepresented at the bottom = total equality. So moderate much egalitarian totally not MRA wow.
See the parts where the text is blue? Those are links. And the red text in little boxes is direct quotes. Why, how do you define “evidence”?
Can you dummies even read, or are you just trying to distract people from the multiple posts where MRAs have tried to claim this man as proof of their politics? “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”, is it?
And then you go on to say things like “men aren’t angry enough” and basically become one of the people this post was about. You’re gross.
You don’t actually believe this, though.
[wow, didn’t realize how spammy I was getting. Sorry! Just one more, I promise]
Women are bred til their bodies give out, pregnancy and childbirth are the leading causes of female mortality worldwide, and attempts to prevent this (like birth control and abortion) are shunned, shamed and banned even in “progressive” countries. In the US in 2013, the rate of fatal workplace injuries was 3.2 per 100,000, while the rate of deaths in childbirth was 18.5 per 100,000. How much thought do you give for our health?
Speaking of bias, workplace fatalities in the US are down across the board except among Latino/Hispanic workers. I’m sure you’ll be out decrying this racial injustice any moment now, right?
@ emilygoddess
No, you aren’t spammy at all! We’ve got quite a few trolls in this thread. I actually really appreciate all of your responses; I think you’ve got all the bases covered.
I was going to respond to all of our adorable trolls myself, but I think I’ll just defer to you and resign myself to putting them all in a colorful little Easter(Ostara) basket with flowers, bonbons and scented fucking candles topped with a sparkly pink bow for extra misandring. Look how cute!!