So I found the “meme” below on the A Voice for Men Facebook page. It purports to show what the Men’s Rights movement is really about:
“Not what you were told to believe, huh?” the AVFM Facebook page administrator asks in a comment below it.
Well, no, it wasn’t.
Trouble is, the person who told me that the “Men’s Human Rights Movement” isn’t about any of these things was, well, AVFM founder and CEO Paul Elam.
Yep, in an AVFM post earlier this year — as I noted at the time — Elam went on at some length about the various issues the MHRM is doing nothing about, on purpose.
“So, what is this thing we call the Men’s Human Rights Movement (MHRM)?” Elam began.
Well, I can best start by telling you what it is not, from my own personal point of view. It is not about passing a Violence Against Men Act or any other form of government reliance on justice and personal liberty. … There are no plans to form a committee for research for testicular cancer or to build a men’s shelter. AVFM does not have a program to reform family courts. …
Neither I nor AVFM has a legislative agenda, nor any politicians to endorse, nor lobbying to accomplish because none of that is of any value in a society that still refuses to accept reality.
Emphasis mine.
As for the issues listed on AVFM’s mission statement, which include numerous items mentioned on the “meme” above, as well as an assortment of other allegedly “humanist” reforms, including “mandatory on demand” paternity testing, abolishing the Violence Against Women Act and “dispens[ing] with child support except in special circumstances?”
Well, as Paul Elam sees it, actually doing anything about any of these things is not Paul Elam’s job. Nor that of any Men’s Rightser.
Sure, if you look at our mission statement you will see many items that will require political and judicial remedy to ultimately accomplish. That, however is not our job at AVFM to accomplish directly.
So if that’s what the Men’s Rights movement doesn’t do, what exactly does it do? Elam is equally blunt:
You want to know what this movement is about? It is very, very simple in my opinion. The MHRM I envision is about one simple thing. Talking without fear or capitulation.
Seriously. That is it. It is about nothing more than people talking to each other, openly and freely, in a world that does not want them to.
I’ve helpfully modified the AVFM meme above so that it more accurately represents the official AVFM position on doing things.
Feel free to use this if you’d like, guys!
Or the one I did at the top of the page, if you’d prefer.
Talking and nigh-unreadable memes. MY EYES, THEY BLEED.
Well, as we all know, talk ain’t cheap, no wonder Paul has to have all those costly pledge drives to keep the conversation going.
I’d love to see any energy from MRA types devoted to anything on that list. Our current patriarchal system DOES hurt men.
But they have no energy to redirect because as pointed out 99% of what they do is write online about hating women.
Hell, if just a handful of them started blogging about male victims of rape or child abuse and how their suffering is indeed different than women’s and in our society underserved, I’d be forced to reevaluate the entire MRA.debacle.
Well, it makes sense to say that AVfM isn’t a political lobby group. They aren’t But it sounds like Elam isn’t into doing any sort of activism because… Um, manly men don’t ask the government for things and no one will listen to us anyway? That’s what I got out of the quote below:
Well, there’s a defeatist attitude.
I think Paul Elam tried to allude to institutionalization, feminists sometimes talk about. I understood it as a underhand criticism: Look, you criticize it, but ask for laws ensuring womens`rights. But the MR-whatever is honest enough not to commit those sins. Of course, that`s still stupid, because you could try to help people without asking for new laws.
Hollow, all-caps letters sending a bogus message? Sounds like Menz Rightzers to me, yup.
(If they ever manage to make a meme that’s concise, on point, and not ugly, I will be sincerely surprised.)
Paul insists that we reject our reality and substitute his own, apparently. That’s AVFM in a nutshell: a bunch of angry jerks ineptly gaslighting the rest of the world.
The first mission of the MRM really ought to be doing a little investigation into readable typography.
But it’s probably a ‘good thing’ it’s so unreadable.
It’s a less good thing that it’s so unfathomable. On the face of it (if you can stand to read it) none of those seems particularly objectionable. Court bias? I’m all for a fair judicial system. Fair custody and child support, seems reasonable. Reliable, non-barrier method, reversible birth control for men, fantastic. But what they want isn’t reasonable and they aren’t willing to do the work to get something reasonable. They want the ability to talk shite and act shite and then let someone else pick up the pieces – including the pieces of their children’s lives – those products of conception when they’ve opted for a ‘retroactive’ abortion by walking out of their children’s lives. 50:50 custody means no child support, which is what most of them are really after. Diving into the comments sections of sites like ROK there is thread after thread of guys advising other guys on how to duck parental responsibility.
They’re not even lobbyists because they don’t have the intellectual gravitas to actually do some research about male suicide rates or DV or educational attainment. Frankly, the working class boys of the UK could really use someone to stand up for them, but people like Elam can’t even stand up for their own bio kids, never mind a huge class of kids who are being hugely underserved but the reasons why and the policy solutions are more complex than talking without fear or ‘capitulation’.
None of those things require a legislative agenda, and there is no frigging need for a violence against men act since the language of the VAWA, despite its title, is gender neutral.
And I can think of several non-legislative ways of dealing with those issues.
1. Providing legal services for men who can’t afford them to deal with divorce
2. Set up homeless shelters
3. factual positive public awareness campaigns
4. Counciling services.
And that’s just off the top of my head
*er counseling not counciling.
And I know depression and suicide awareness have come up here before so I’m going to drop this link, and hope it’s useful:American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
https://www.afsp.org
Here’s how you know how low down and lazy these these misogynists are: They look up to people like Elam, Doosh, Pox etc. Those guys do absolutely nothing but spend their follower’s money and encourage men to do everything they can to hurt women without ever doing anything for men in need. For men certain of their “greatness” they never accomplish anything but making asses of themselves. The only men the manureosphere want to help are rapists and abusers and by “help” I mean “cheer on”.
You have to be looking up from the center of the Earth to look up to men like that.
AVFM doesn’t engage in any sort of lobbying out activism because that might siphon precious donation money out of Paul Elam’s pockets.
*or, not out. Damn autocorrect
I suppose in a way they do provide “abuse services”, but not in the way that that graphic had intended to say.
Thank Spirit that’s been clarified! Now we can get up to our important business while they sit around and talk.
The more these guys talk, the more I suspect family courts were being very fair when they removed their parental rights. The more they talk, the more I am sure none of them are worried about false accusations of rape or violence being taken seriously. They’re worried that authentic accusations of rape and violence will be taken seriously. They hate women’s DV shelters because they allow women to escape their abuse. They hate feminism for the same reason. DV rates in the US started dropping when divorce became easier to obtain and the stigma against divorced women started to fade away. Men did not stop abusing. Women started leaving. No one to abuse means less abuse. These are men who are angry that they cannot trap women and children and make them miserable for a lifetime.
Meanwhile all of the issues they clam to care about are symptoms of an authoritarian patriarchal society. That free market capitalism they love so much is a big part of the problem too. They don’t address those problems because they don’t really care about anything but getting to rape and beat women and girls. That’s all they want to do and their rage comes from the fact feminism is making it harder for them to do so without repercussions.
They aren’t just cranks. They’re liars and criminals too.
I know it’s possible to Like comments on here because I’ve seen other people do it – but I can’t find the button. Instead of that – and in a response that’s a bit more meaningful – that’s wonderfully said, Lea!
Would that all they do is talk. Their anger, entitlement, and meanness has a way of spilling out into the real world in the form of brigaded comment sections, doxxed and stalked critics, gun massacre victims, coerced sex partners, women feeling unsafe on the streets, and so on.
Even if all they did was “talk freely” among themselves, they don’t seem to be very good at supporting and healing one another. It’s like this toxic brew of hyper-individualism (Ayn Rand Is Always Watching) and homophobia (“must..not…be seen…complimenting…or showing favorability…towards other men…they’ll think I’m coming on to them…”) that prevents them from banding together to accomplish genuine social change. Instead they waste their time on obnoxious pranks that feed their addiction to hatred and make them feel temporarily superior.
“Talking without fear or capitulation” is really code for “a safe space to be a childish, misogynist, racist, hateful jerkweasel without Mommy coming in and telling us to clean up our act”. It’s so unmasculine to have to follow rules and conform to social conventions and take other people’s experiences into account.
Dave, I think you misspelled “wanking”.
I agree with all the elements on the list. Changing our gender expectations that men shouldn’t take care of their kids as much as women, that men can’t be vulnerable (domestic violence on men is funny to a lot of people – including MRAs), etc. would be a good thing for people of all genders.
I’ve yet to see a manospherian who actually cares about those issues without making it all about women are evil, dumb, and/or secretly in power through their ass, though. But usually they don’t even pretend to care and skip right to the women part.
Maudell:
Yup. Every single time they bring up issues in the list, the point is never “this is a problem what do we do about it?” but “waaah women and feminists are meeeeeaaaan for not fixing these problems for us!”
Always.
OR their “solution” to male issues is to restrict women’s rights, because somehow women having more power over their own lives is the chief cause of homelessness and the draft.
I mean, it is a cause of divorce and not giving men veto power over whether to abort or not, but ffs, womens freedom =/= male oppression.
Of course women’s freedom equals male oppression! If these guys aren’t free to oppress women, then clearly they’re now the ones being oppressed.
As the sister of a man who was sexually abused in childhood, and having trained as a social worker I care very much about the abuse of boys and men (as I would anyway, but I have a vested interest). I am sure Elam et al would not give a toss, but social workers in the UK (at least when I trained 8 years ago) are as concerned about the abuse of men and boys as women and girls. But 80% of us are women, so I guess that cancels out everything else unless we commit to virulent anti feminism!
When I see lists like that, I immediately think of the AVFM conference and how one of the speakers made a joke about his son being raped in prison.
At a convention… For men’s rights.