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Men’s Rights Activists Fight the Real Enemy: GQ Magazine, British Edition

MRA elder Paul Elam, totally reasonable guy
MRA elder Paul Elam, totally reasonable guy

In yet another stunning victory for their cause, Men’s Rights Activists have successfully infiltrated the comments of yet another article critical of them, leading possibly dozens of comment readers to mutter to themselves “Jesus Christ these guys again, honestly do they do anything else besides post this crap?”

This time, the target of the Men’s Rights raiders was an article on the website of GQ’s British Edition with the self-explanatory title “Men’s Rights Activists are cave dwelling idiots.”

Naturally, the comments from the MRA invaders tended to rather prove the author’s point, with regard to cave-dwelling idiocy.

There were accusations of gender treason:

Michel Famaey · Antwerp, Belgium Isn't GQ a men's magazine? No wonder your numbers are going down, traitors.

Bog-standard predictions of feminism’s impending demise:

James Chapman · Southern Business School Funny how these types of articles are surfacing more and more as the MRM is growing on A DAILY basis. Me thinks it is an attempt to ressurrect feminism as a movement, but unfortunately too many people are seeing through FEMINIST BIGOTRY. Regardless of what the dictionary definition of feminism is, its actions speak louder than words. It's a cult movement determined to acquire special privileges for women at the cost of their male counterparts. Feminism has overstepped its boundaries and it is slowly but surely dying.

Unique takes on women’s history:

Dennis Markham · Darien, Connecticut They were always female supremacists. At least the more successful ones. Every time feminism won a right for women, the consummate responsibilities didn't come for another 100 years. Women were able to keep their own income looooong before they were expected to be treated as financially responsible adults: to pay for their own upkeep, gambling debts, children, or even their own taxes. The "strong independent woman" was still entitled to the financial support of her husband like one of his children until about 1960. Look up Mark Wilkes.

Tampon jokes:

Zooper Duper Now I know why I never read gq magazine. Rupert can your next article be on how to and how often to change the male tampon?.

“Retard” used as an insult:

Balaji Narasimhan · Chief Executive Officer at Sahana and Daniya Narasimhan This article reads a lot like a spiteful four year old wrote it. I guess since your audience is feminist you have to write like a drooling retard to appeal to their simple brains.

Awkward turkey-related metaphors:

Jonathan Connett Disgusting that you try and position men as though they shouldn't have a voice. Equality is here, life will never be fair to everyone. You are like a Turkey voting for Christmas. Equality means all should be represented not blamed for everything as often happens today. You need to know when to stop sometimes and just get on with life.

And of course, Paul Elam:

Paul Elam · Founder and Publisher at A Voice for Men You idiots really think you are going to shut us up or even slow us down? Men have issues that are not being addressed. Publications like GQ would love to keep it that way. So you engage in a victim contest counting on the fact that your readers are so dumbed-down that they won't recognize the canard of that zero sum game. Magazine for men, my ass. Shame on the lot of you.

I should note that GQ seems to be moderating the comments fairly strictly; several I was intending to quote vanished before I grabbed a screenshot. I can only imagine what the rest of the moderated comments look like.

I should also note that Mr. Elam was so offended by the GQ article that he went and made a video about it.  

In it the angry Elam, occasionally sounding like one of the storytellers on Drunk History, denounces the article as “lickspittle journalism,” describes its author, Rupert Myers, as looking “kinda like Alfred E. Neuman with liver disease,” defends the infamous AVFM article in which he referred to Bill Cosby’s accusers as “a bunch of drug whoring star [expletive deleted]” and makes the preposterous charge that it is Myers who is the true misogynist for criticizing his Cosby article because this means that Myers thinks that, as Elam puts it,

talking honestly about the reality of drug whoring star [expletive deleted]s is hostile to all women.

You may have to run that through your head a few times until it makes any kind of sense, because it really doesn’t. 

Elam then declares Myers to be a “misogynist little [expletive deleted].

WINNING!

H/T — @idlediletante

 

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zoon echon logon
zoon echon logon
8 years ago

Did Paul Elam just point out that fighting for rights is not a zero sum game? Is this Paul “the only way to fight for men’s rights is to attack women until they have less rights because they’re hogging all the rights” Elam and not some other guy named Paul Elam?

Bina
Bina
8 years ago

I feel like a new term needs to be invented for what the first sentence in Elam’s comment displays — perhaps straw martyring? There’s nothing in the article that indicates a desire to actively silence or slow down the MRM, yet there he is, nailing himself to that imaginary cross.

Well, in Paulie’s case, “damselling for dollars” comes to my mind.

As for the rest of them, wanking works for me.

Anon
Anon
8 years ago

My god, the entire comment section is filled with MRAbrigaders.

Do they think that merely saying “bias bias bias!” invalidates every point someone makes?

Argenti Aertheri
8 years ago

Randomly: I’ve finally figured out why Elam always looks furious. I hate to do this to you all, but go take a careful look at his eyes, just the actual eye itself. Now go look at any photo ever. Drawing faces you do the outline of the eye, and then the not actually a circle for the iris. It’s not a circle cuz the vast majority of the time the upper and lower edges are behind your eyelids — you can’t see the white of the eye around it. Elam? You can ALWAYS see that sliver of white above his eyes, fucking always.

I mean, he probably always is furious, but that’s the detail that makes us all go “wtf is with his eyestalks… wtf autocorrect? He has eyestalks?!

I give up, you know what I meant!

raysa
raysa
8 years ago

Argenti :

There’s a Japanese term for the eye thing. It’s been mentioned here before, I think.

In most people, the eyes appear like you say. But when the whites are visible at the top, it means one thing, and when they are visible at the bottom, it means another. Those two things are mental balance and substance abuse, I don’t know which goes with which.

Lots of famous people have that odd look, like they are sitting on a set of car keys. Michelle Bachmann is always the one I think of, she has that look.

Bina
Bina
8 years ago

Paulie IS chronically bug-eyed, no doubt about it. It’s like his cerebrum swells so much with constant rage, his eyes just pop half out of his head from the pressure behind them.

One of these days, I expect he’ll blow an artery in his brain.

Ghost Robot
Ghost Robot
8 years ago

No laughably pretentious Attila Vinczer contribution?

msexceptiontotherule
msexceptiontotherule
8 years ago

@Argenti

Paul Elam has eyestalks. Which make him appear perpetually as though he’s in a state of rabid frothing fury, spewing hate from that great big spit-flecked maw of his.

I kind of imagine him yelling at his computer monitor as he writes crap online, not to make sure he’s making sense or doesn’t come across like an asshole, but to hear his own voice going on and on about blahblahblahblahblah feminists blahblahblahblahblah hateeveryonedieevilfeminists blahblahblahblahblah….etc.

Auntie Alias
Auntie Alias
8 years ago

Ha! Good on GQ UK.

@Ghost Robot

Haven’t you heard that Attila broke up with AVFM?

Styne
Styne
8 years ago

Mr. Elam’s comment isn’t nearly as inflammatory as many of the others. And it was rightfully upvoted, if you click over to the article.

EJ (The Other One)
EJ (The Other One)
8 years ago

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but shame upon you all.

Whether Paul Elam has eye stalks or not is irrelevant to whether he’s a lying, hateful sack of shit. (Which he is.) In this comments section we don’t discriminate against people with bulging eyes.

Nequam
Nequam
8 years ago

@raysa: “Sanpaku” is the word you’re looking for. I thought it only referred to white showing beneath the iris, though.

Argenti Aertheri
8 years ago

EJ (the other one) — I can’t tell if you’re serious, or joining in with the hilarity that is my autocorrect. Cuz the idea that the hate filled asshole has snail eyestalks is just plain funny. Were we talking about a medical condition here, I’d agree, but eyestalks!

This is how competent I am tonight, I just realized everyone else is prolly thinking Dalek, while my autocorrect almost certainly decided I was talking about snails (I do that, Puff eats them, so I breed them)

…I’m just gonna go to bed and let the grown ups talk, since I’m clearly not one currently. G’night!

rugbyyogi
rugbyyogi
8 years ago

Yes. Yes. Turkeys voting for Christmas is a British saying. It means stupidly self-destructive and compliance with a system that means to do you in….the metaphoric near- equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot.

Turkey is the go-to Christmas main here. (I’m cooking one this year – at request, I far prefer something else – last year I did an amazing ham with a cardamom and brown sugar glaze that was so good I’d do it every year if I didn’t have a picky 8 yr old who only eats beige food and the fact I didn’t do a Thanksgiving meal this year.)

Anarchonist
Anarchonist
8 years ago

Ah, Elam, champion of Men’s Rights everywhere. Except men who don’t agree with him. And men who are not abusers. And men who generally do not fit the extremely narrow view of masculinity that Elam and other MRAs hold. Pretty much any man who is not Elam, come to think of it.

And of all the manly man rational arguments he could make, he decides to insult someone’s appearance. Such human rights. Much movement. Wow.

orange tango drinker
orange tango drinker
8 years ago

“Turkeys voting for Christmas” is a British term for people going against their own interests. Here in the UK, roast turkey is the typical Christmas meal

guest
guest
8 years ago

OK that is pretty interesting.

http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=4762

Just woke up, and have already learned something.

brooked
brooked
8 years ago

Wow, those comment threads just go on and on and on, often with the same MRAs agreeing with each other about how very terrible feminism is.

I enjoyed this exchange.

Lady Commentator responding to Elam: “Maybe since 99% of what your group does is sling mud from comments sections, no one likes you even when your concerns are legitimate.”

One stinging response from a MRA true believer: “[Lady Commentator] I’m guessing you get your worldview from Anita Sarkeesian and have not ever bothered to question it.”

He’s very terrible at guessing.

MissEB47
MissEB47
8 years ago

@Argenti-those eyes of his really creep me out! I think it is just his facial expression, though. Like missexceptiontotherule said, he appears “perpetually as though he’s in a state of rabid frothing fury, spewing hate from that great big spit-flecked maw of his”. Which makes his eyes even more frightening! 0.0 It is his inner ugliness, misogyny and hate showing through.

Wetherby
Wetherby
8 years ago

Any time someone says “methinks”, I drink. And stop reading.

You’re in excellent company:

I save time on the web by reading nobody’s opinion that contains the word “methinks”. Nor is anyone worth reading who leaves out the punctuation. Those who have no idea where the apostrophe goes, but shove it in anyway, can also be ignored. [Clive James]

Banananana dakry
Banananana dakry
8 years ago

@MissEB

Mostly eyes like that tell me one thing: “Back away very slowly, and for God’s sake don’t make any sudden moves.”

Johanna Roberts
8 years ago

Saw this. The comment section is pretty clean but yeah, they’re modding it pretty heavily. They really do show a lot of their true colors when they rage against a _magazine article_ calling them out on bigotry by being… well, bigots.

Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
8 years ago

I sometimes use “Methinks,” albeit snarkily…

Lisa C
Lisa C
8 years ago

I’d hate to spread a rumor about Paul Elam (tee-hee), but in the photo above, his skin looks relatively unlined but most of all shiny. Very shiny. As though his face were packaged in Saran Wrap. That’s the way skin looks after plastic surgery. I think it’s because the skin needs to be moisturized pretty much all the time.

The eyes look the same though.

@Kat-If it’s not photoshop, it might offer an interesting explanation as to where any donation money ends up.

I wonder if Elam ever goes online sober.

Newt
Newt
8 years ago

Variants of “like Turkeys voting for Christmas” have been around for some time:

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1979/mar/28/her-majestys-government-opposition-motion#column_471

“methinks” is also more common in UK comment sections, and expands to: “I am feigning slight amusement so I can claim to be an impartial observer; also, I heard someone quoting Shakespeare once.”