As A Voice for Men’s latest failed fundraiser whimpered towards its sad ending last week — with less than half of its target amount raised — everyone’s favorite Men’s Rights hate site did have a little bit of good news to report: AVFM’s Paul Elam has managed to snag Paul Elam as a speaker for AVFM’s upcoming “Men’s Issues” conference and probable fiasco.
As the official conference site notes, Mr. Elam is the prestigious “founvder [sic] and publisher of A Voice for Men.”
At the conference, Elam promises, attendees will be able to
[h]ear provocative, fascinating speakers and enjoy shared meals and social festivities with the idea in mind that we can put society back on track to move forward instead of just continuing to set bridges ablaze.
Wait, they’ve been doing what to bridges? I’m just going to assume that’s a metaphor.
So who are these “provocative, fascinating speakers” that AVFM promises will be on tap? Brace yourself, as AVFM has managed to score a number of other speakers who are nearly as notable as Elam, including:
- August Løvenskiolds, A Voice for Men’s food columnist
- Tara (“Dr. T”) Palmatier, a therapist who does an online “radio” show with Paul Elam
- Tom (“Licensed Clinical Social Worker T”) Golden, a therapist who does online “radio” shows with Paul Elam
- Jonathan Taylor, a “former college instructor” and blogger at AVoiceForMaleStudents.com
- “Andy Bob,” some dude from Australia who comments on A Voice for Men a lot
The keynote speaker will be none other than Harry Crouch, president of the National Coalition for Men, an organization whose website, according to Alexa, gets roughly the same amount of traffic as Brony.com (and considerably less than this blog).
They did manage to convince Men’s Rights granddaddy Warren Farrell to stop by as well.
So what important “Men’s Issues” is this conference going to take up?
The shameful epidemic of rape in our nation’s prison system, which, given the demographics of the prison population, mostly affects men? No.
The drug war, which has led to the incarceration of millions of young men of color? Nah.
“Stop and Frisk” and other police policies that disproportionately affect young men of color? Nope!
As Elam explains on the conference web site:
On October 30 and 31, 2015 in Houston, Texas we will start corrective measures in earnest by initiating a more complete and honest dialogue; one that includes key factors that have literally been elbowed out of the way for half a century. That is male disposability and female sexual power.
Yep, that’s right, they’re cribbing both “key factors” from a Warren Farrell book written more than two decades ago. Apparently feminists have “literally been elbow[ing]” men trying to talk about these issues, with their literal elbows.
“Male disposability” is Farrell’s upside-down notion that historical restrictions on the jobs women were allowed to do, as well as on military service, were in fact a sort of female privilege.
“Female sexual power” is a slightly fancier way of talking about what Farrell once called “miniskirt power, cleavage power and flirtation power.”
That’s right: he thinks that women control men through the hypnotic powers of their boobs and butts.
Farrell is especially obsessed with women’s ass power. The e-book edition of his “The Myth of Male Power” features the word “Power” in the title being shattered by the nude posterior of a woman. During an “Ask Me Anything” appearance on Reddit, Farrell explained why he chose this image:
![DoloresCruz1982 86 points 22 hours ago (174|87) Why is a woman's butt on the cover of a book about problems faced by males in our society? permalink save report give gold reply [–]warrenfarrell [S] 2 points 20 hours ago (184|182) i assume you're referring to the profile of a woman's rear on the new ebook edition of The Myth of Male Power. first, that was my choice--i don't want to put that off on the publisher! i chose that to illustrate that the heterosexual man's attraction to the naked body of a beautiful woman takes the power out of our upper brain and transports it into our lower brain. every heterosexual male knows this. and the sooner men confront the powerlessness of being a prisoner to this instinct, we may earn less money to pay for women's drinks, dinners and diamonds, but we'll have more control over our lives, and therefor more real power. it's in women's interests for me to confront this. many heterosexual women feel imprisoned by men's inability to be attracted to women who are more beautiful internally even if their rear is not perfect.](https://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/warrenbutt.png)
Good to know that when it comes to the deadly threat of sexy lady parts, A Voice for Men is on the case.
But that does raise a question: when members of AVFM’s Twitter squad recently Tweeted a topless photo of one of their female colleagues at AVFM to an assortment of feminists, including me, were they trying to hypnotize us?
“Paul Elam manages to snag Paul Elam as a speaker for upcoming A Voice for Men conference.”
Well my days of not taking Paul Elam seriously are certainly coming to a middle.
I would LOVE to see them make graphs and pie charts out of their made up stats regarding ‘female sexual power’. That would be hilarious.
I would LOVE to see them make graphs and pie charts out of their made up stats regarding ‘female sexual power’. That would be hilarious.
Oops. How’d that happen?
Wat.
Out of all the important things they could be talking about, they still focus on us feeemales and our evil sexy bodies that both titillate and disgust them and how feeemales must use their bodies to exploit them and their poor widdle peens (because projection).
Seriously guys, can you talk about something actually important to men as a group for once like male rape victims, racism against men of color, helping out queer men, or working on accepting transmen into your community? Y’know, things feminists have been talking about for a long while now and we’d like you to get on the same page about? Or things that aren’t about you poor oppressed cishet white dudebros?
But, since Løvenskiolds is going to be there, I wonder if they’re going to talk about how to turn ordinary steaks into charcoal briquettes with one simple grilling technique! Because grilling is manly, and thus, feminists must hate it!
Speaking of (actually delicious) foodstuffs, there’s this food segment on my local news every day, and today they had some really awesome looking tailgate-esque foods being presented by a lady who does recipes with her son for Raley’s grocery store’s magazine.
She made corndogs from chicken chorizo sausages and corn muffins with BBQ pulled pork in the middle, and eggrolls with pastrami and cabbage and carrots and peppers.
Okay, maybe someone can help me out here.
On a number of occasions now, I’ve seen MRAs make some variation of the statement “once you take the red pill, you make less money,” but I haven’t seen anyone explain why that should be the case. What’s the supposed mechanism here?
Or is it just another variation on “evil feminazis control the world and make *real* men suffer”?
Only by fighting against the power of women’s sexiness can men be free of the power that they assign to women! Ignore the fact that feminism fights against the notion of women being sexy for men’s benefit! That’s a lie!
… I think I’m doing this right? Or wrong? I can’t even tell in this bizarro world of theirs.
Gaebolga, I think it is their way of explaining to themselves that it’s not their hateful attitude holding them back from promotions at work, it’s that they refuse to suck up to the feeeeeeeemales.
B-b-b-b-but if men are attracted to women who “are more beautiful internally” but don’t have perfect posteriors, won’t the world as we know it collapse? I mean, all these guys seem to talk about is how this woman or that woman is unfuckable or ugly.
OK, I’ve heard your pitch about red pills and they don’t really appeal. What other colours do you have? If you have any of the little white ones we had back in the early 90s we might be able to do business.
Walp. Men’s rights activism is geared towards heterosexual white men; if you’re into dick, or not white, you are invisible to the ones not outright hostile towards what you are.
While it could be (sensibly and reasonably) argued that feminism only touches the tip of the iceberg when it comes to issues facing women of color, that’s never struck me as a problem caused by intentional bias and there’s a movement to rectify this issue through education.
The same can’t be said for both parties.
Thanks, isidore13; that makes sense (and why they all seem to think the statement is self-evidently true).
On a side note, a friend of mine told me every time she sees an MRA use the word “female” to refer to women, she hears it in a Ferengi voice in her head. Thanks for writing it out that way!
The “once you take the red pill, you make less money” logic is that men won’t have to earn as much money because they won’t be paying for dinner with women, buying women expensive jewelry, etc.
I thought making less money was a choice, because then you pay less taxes and don’t support the babies out of wedlock and/or contraception that us ‘whores’ make the gov’m’t (aka surrogate father) pay for us? Apparently for red pillars, living poorly is the best revenge.
ninja’d by David. I dunno if I should feel proud or sad?
In celebration of Paul Elam getting Paul Elam to speak at Paul Elam’s conference, I had a cake made:
Another convention? Oh goodie. I wonder how many women will be sexually assaulted at this one.
Yeah, the “take the red pill, make less money” scheme reminds me of all the people who were going to go Galt in 2012 to avoid the Affordable Care Act, in that they are purposely limiting their income in order to avoid responsibilities.
I know several people who’ve claimed to have stopped working altogether so they don’t have to pay child support. I don’t like them.
The “Red pill, less money” idiocy just makes me think of the many, many MRAs who scab money off their mothers/sisters/girlfriends/ex-girlfriends instead of even thinking about getting a job. Like, coincidentally, ol’ Googly Eyes Elam up there.
@Falconer:
The MRM likes them, though. If they get in legal trouble, then they get to be proof that the legal system is heartless and brainless and orders men to pay support beyond their means.
Err, not snarking at people with legitimate reasons for not working (disabled, in school, shithouse economy, etc), just MRAs whose only reason is “But I don’t wanna! *stomps foot*”
I can’t wait to inform my partner that he could make less money AND go his own way (away from me). I’m sure he will be thrilled at these two prospects. Thanks MRAs!
Any explanation as to why they think it’s ok to hang out with women like GWW or JB, if women are so evil?
“Takes the power out of our upper brain and transports it to our lower brain?” Is that a fancy way of saying “it makes us think with the other head?”
Is it terrible that I’m actually kind of excited to hear how this thing is going to go? Cuz holy shit, those fundraiser numbers are even lower than I anticipated. I love me a good laughably terrible, extremely low budget train wreck and it’s even better when it’s the sign that a movement of assholes is on its last legs.
While I can totally empathize with, say, teenage boys or young men having a certain fear of women they desire–that’s pretty universal imo–does anyone else think it’s kind of sad when you’re a grown man in your 60s and you’re still afraid of “female sexual power”? And male sexuality has historically proven to be more dangerous than female sexuality. Straight girls and women have to worry about everything straight boys and men have to be worry about in terms of their burgeoning sexuality–falling head over heels for someone, doing stupid things in the name of love, being prey to manipulation etc.–and bear a much, much higher burden of also worrying of our physical safety or being physically harmed by prospective lovers.