So last night, shortly before going to bed, I decided to watch some dumb videos on YouTube to clear my head of all the manosphere nonsense I’d been reading about for much of the evening. Scrolling through my various Youtube subscriptions, I happened to notice one with a rather intriguing title:
David Futrelle: Trying to Get MHRAs Killed
It was a video by the self-described “Men’s Human Rights Activist” Paul Elam, who needs no introduction to readers of this blog. Happily, it turns out that only a portion of the hour and a half video was devoted to me; I found that segment of the video and watched — well, listened — to several minutes before I had to turn it off. (I’m not going to link to it.)
Apparently, Elam is convinced that, by writing critically about him and his colleagues, I am whipping up hatred towards the Men’s Rights movement.
His specific complaint: a day or two ago, someone apparently doxxed Elam’s colleague Jack Barnes on Twitter. Needless to say, I don’t support doxxing and I have no idea who did it; indeed, I only learned of it, last night, from Elam’s video.
But apparently Elam holds me personally responsible, because I wrote a post about Barnes a few days ago, a response to a post he did about me that was filled with ridiculous accusations and rather puerile attacks on my weight.
In Elam’s mind, evidently, when I point out the terrible things he and his colleagues say and do, I’m giving them a bad reputation and therefore “trying to get MHRA’s killed.”
Paul, do you want to know who is responsible for the bad reputation of Men’s Rights Activists? You are. Your allies at AVFM are. The Men’s Rights Activists who fill the internet with angry misogynistic screeds are.
Hell, you did more damage to the Men’s Rights movement with this two-minute video than I could do in a year.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Paul, but most of what I do on this blog is to simply chronicle what you and other internet misogynists say. Sometimes I make jokes about it. Sometimes what you and your pals say is too horrifying to make jokes about.
Oh, and sometimes I post pictures and videos of cats.
You won’t find any threats, much less any incitements to violence, on my blog — except in the quotes of the people I write about.
And as long as you and other internet misogynists keep on saying terrible things, I will continue to point them out.
David, I can’t imagine how stressful it must be to bear the brunt of all the MRA hate you receive. For every blow you receive from them, please know that all of us here in the comments fully support you and are rooting for you. I can’t fully express how happy it makes me that there is a man so vocal rooting for feminism. You’re really something special. I hope you keep on keeping on. Thanks for everything you do.
A-effin’-men! Tell em, David!
When feminists are doxxed, it’s no big deal and just the internet. They should just get over it. When it happens to the MRAs, it’s the end of the world. Go figure.
They project like medieval siege engines, don’t they?…
I saw this POS last night and listened to enough of it to glean about as much as you did. The lying in every sentence got to be too much for me. Also, JudgyBitch.
“How dare you show the world that I’m a shithead! Now everyone hates me! This is all your fault”
If any of these idiots had any PR skills they wouldn’t be so vocal in their hatred of your blog. Every time they get mad over you quoting the shitty things they say, it only makes them look bad and reminds the rest of the world that misogynists like Paul Elam are perfectly aware that what they are saying is repulsive.
And we’re armed with flammable beer!
I’m so bored of this “I know you are but what am I!” game that manospherians, and particularly Paul Elam, think is oh so clever. Because feminists point out that Paul Elam actually incites hatred and promotes violence against women, he thinks he’s being brilliant by saying anyone who says anything less than glowing about him is doing the same. Yawn.
Thank you David for this blog. I really appreciate it. Thank you for exposing all this online hate – it’s not pleasant stuff but it’s important to raise awareness of individuals and groups who spread this toxic stuff around. I have loads of respect for you David, you must be a really strong person to be able to cope with all this anger, hate and delusion day after day.
So.. Jack Barnes openly celebrated the murder of women by angry men. Somehow that’s not inciting violence. But when David quotes Jack Barnes’ actual words in a blog post, that’s “trying to get him killed”. Man-logic has never been clearer.
You know, if MRAs, PUAs and MGTOWs and all these other ridiculous outfits want to put WHTM out of business, the simplest thing to do would be to stop feeding it ammo. But no, they open their mouths, say something jaw-droppingly awful and/or stupid and then complain that others take exception, which only they are allowed to do.
They seem to have a lot of time on their hands and boring lives. I guess that’s why they interpret criticism as death threats. More exciting that way.
So David quotes what MRAs say and that is equivalent to inciting murder (according to MRA logic)?
Paul Elam is good at demonstrating how childish and ridiculous he is, and of course one more time demonstrates to the world that the biggest anti-promotion for the MRA movement – are MRAs themselves.
Big props to David ho has to read the bullshit they post every day. Cleaning toilets would be more joyful than reading through the MRA stink pits of the Internet, but just like with every job, somebody has to do it, and David deserves all respect for it.
*appluase*
I wonder if this might be what they’re talking about, in some sort of twisted way?
Like, we all know how much they love to pull the “Context!!1!1!eleven!” card, so maybe they’ve actually managed to convince themselves that these quotes are completely fabricated and are therefor some sort of veiled threat aimed at them?
It doesn’t make any sense to me, either, but then none of the racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia I’ve seen on the internet in the past year has made any sense.
“but most of what I do on this blog is to simply chronicle what you and other internet misogynists say.”
Funny how people like Elam are all about projection — they accuse their opponents of doing what they actually do. I doubt anyone who opposes MRAs wants them to suffer any physical harm. Our side just wants to point out the toxicity of their viewpoints. But that’s enough for them to whine as if they are being victimized.
Jack Barnes (paraphrase) “We and my colleagues at AVFM anonymously bully and harass feminists because we think we have the right to do so, we don’t care if it’s actually breaking the law.”
(Gets outed and comments are connected to his real life name);
Jack “PEOPLE WILL KNOW IT WAS ME THAT SAID STUFF LIKE THAT NOW I MIGHT GET IN TROUBLE AND BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE WAAAAAAAAAH!”
Me “Who? Oh. No sympathy. Don’t care. You didn’t own your own shit so now it’s owning you.”
just more evidence of an inability to view the world outside their own egos.
This is coming from Paul Elam the pr*ck who told David to go kill himself, make October bash a b**** month, etc and David is the violent one?
A hypocrite that’s what he and the rest are.
Good for you, David. Thank you for helping to break up the misogynistic echo chamber that prevails in many places on the Internet (which then often extends offline). The MRAs hate that, and of course, they mad. Rock on.
Are the “MHRAs” just afraid of cats? I can see why they would struggle with this blog.
That’s even if they did get doxxed. I mean, it could be a false flag, right? That’s what happened to Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, and so many other feminists out there, according to MRAs.
I mean, they could be making it up, right?
What @flatpossum said. It must be stressful as hell getting all this (frequently bizarre, overly personal and straight-up incomprehensible) shit thrown at you all the time, but your writing is really appreciated.
And yeah I think it’s pretty telling how angry the ~manosphere gets at someone who, much of the time, is doing nothing other than reprinting their own words, with the occasional ‘wtf’ and cat picture thrown in.
The hypocrisy of these people astound me. Its perfectly fine for them to dox, insult, even make up crap about others but even the tiniest criticism their way and you’re a “mangina, white knight, beta idiot out to get them”. I mean there are two options here either they are truly that ignorant and self-unaware that they don’t realize they do the exact stuff they accuse the feminists of doing to them….or they are that evil, that Machiavellian that this is all just a ruse and they are completely aware of what giant hypocrites they are and don’t care.
just sad at the end of the day, sad and depressing
oh, there is a lot of individuals all along that spectrum, I think (@firechild). I’d like to think that the infighting and bizarre behavior going on recently, is just them screaming louder and louder as those who DO have a level of self-awareness re-evaluate the whole situation. It’s demagoguery in other words, but hopefully a sort that only appeals to those who are truly just miserable, hate-filled shitbirds who want nothing more than to flock together