In the wake of the Portland train stabbings that left two men dead and one seriously wounded after they tried to stop a white supremacist from harassing several women, Paul Elam — still probably the best-known Men’s Rights Activist online — posted a tweet that spoke volumes — not about the incident itself, but about the utter moral bankruptcy of the Men’s Rights movement.
https://twitter.com/anearformen/status/868917239143178240
When other Tweeters objected, Elam doubled down and began spewing insults — aimed not just at his critics but at the murdered men themselves.
https://twitter.com/anearformen/status/869066210964631552
https://twitter.com/anearformen/status/869068999577006080
In one tweet, he suggested that the victims themselves were the cause of the violence that left them dead.
https://twitter.com/anearformen/status/869064408252772354
In his capacity as a leader of what is essentially a hate movement, Elam has said many terrible things over the years — from his post suggesting that women who go home with men without wanting to have sex with them are “damn near demanding” to be raped” to a short story offering an apologia for — indeed, a glorification of — domestic abuse. These tweets, I think, rank up there with his most reprehensible writings, for two main reasons.
First, as many observers have noted, it was not “chivalry” that killed these men. It was an angry and hateful man with a knife who was harassing women on a train.
Elam thinks it unfair that the tenets of chivalry call upon men to protect women — why should men have to serve as unpaid bodyguards for women, he has often asked? What he doesn’t like to talk about is that these volunteer bodyguards aren’t protecting women from bears — there aren’t a lot of those in my neighborhood — but in the overwhelming majority of cases from other men.
There are a lot of problematic things about “white knights,” as Elam insists upon calling them, but the plain fact is that the “good men” that Elam castigates as terminally stupid would be out of a job if there weren’t so many bad men around harassing and abusing women.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, Elam is essentially declaring war on the very thing that sets us apart from brute nature — our ability to feel empathy for others, including people unlike ourselves. A man standing up for a woman who’s being harassed may or may not be engaging in an act of chivalry but it is certainly an act of altruism and basic human solidarity. It’s driven by the same empathetic and altruistic impulse that led so many non-Muslims here in the US to rush to their nearest airports to protest Trump’s Muslim ban.
This sort of cross-cultural solidarity is pretty much the only thing that can save our country from the hatred and meanness that is Trumpism. We need more empathy, not less.
Elam would rather we raise our sons not to feel this sort of empathy towards women. That’s bad enough. But he’s not the only MRA with an empathy problem. And it isn’t confined to his feelings about women.
It’s not just that MRAs are indifferent towards, if not actively hostile, towards women; they lack empathy towards boys and men as well. Indeed, in one notorious post (archived here; I wrote about it here), Elam literally told the “troubled men” who have turned to A Voice For Men for help to ““go fucking bother someone else with your problems” if they weren’t donating money to his site, which is to say him, as he keeps the donations for himself.
Even though he seems to have taken in literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations over the years, he’s never bothered to even try to set up, say, a hotline for men. Instead, he’s set himself up as a sort of ersatz internet therapist for men — he has no actual training as a therapist — literally charging the “troubled men” he claims to be an advocate for $90 an hour to talk to him on Skype.
But he’s not the only MRA who combines a hatred for women with an utter lack of interest in doing anything altruistic for their fellow men.
In the first few years of second wave feminism in the late 60s and early 70s, feminist activists set up shelters and women’s centers and countless other entities designed to benefit women in desperate need of help. In the seven years I’ve been covering the Men;s Rights movement, MRAs haven’t even set up a single hotline, much less a functional men’s shelter. The only notable MRA, er, victory? Being so obnoxious they’ve convinced numerous media sites to shut down their formerly MRA-infested comments sections.
It’s no wonder MRAs feel such hostility towards real heroes. They’re only heroes in their own minds.
Covfefe. Why did it have to be covfefe?
@Falconer nice to meet you!
@dlouwe
Assuming that’s Hungarian, the album title is “Born under a bad star”
And the tracks:
“Lack of success”
“Unfortunate”
“Suicide Sunday”, though in Chinese, the first part of the songtitle is translated “Oh that one left the OS”
“Dismantled Ambulance”??
“Dawn”
“Pigeon Alone”
“Second Pigeon”
“Donkey Bird”
“Credulous”
“Twilight Movement”
“Nobody Dala”??
Perhaps that lost something in translation, but it’s quite surreal to begin with.
I agree with “Difficult to dance to”
@Alan:
The Prodigy is another band that I always get confused with another band for absolutely no logical reason. I think in their case, it’s The Chemical Brothers? Maybe. It’s been a while since I thought about either.
Re: Music Chat:
In general my preferred music is, uh, stuff people tend to sneer at or recoil away from in horror. While I like most genres, I lean toward prog metal, post-hardcore, and metalcore, and the latter two are always really frustrating for me to talk about. Metal purists hate them for not being metal enough, punk purists hate them for being too metal, and everyone else hates them because of screaming.
@ PeeVee:
“I was called some choice names.”
Yeah, no one can call names quite like a rightie. Schoolyard tactics are their bread and butter.
When I read such twisted opinions coming from people who would then put down opponents as “hysterical”, “crazy”, “violent” and whatever else, I wonder if this comes from a genuine lack of awareness, or if it’s some right-wing mass propaganda plot of global, conspiracy-theory dimensions.
How would you justify hiring vigilante para-military groups with repeatedly documented affiliations to violent extremists so as to intimidate and possibly harm people simply for exercising their 1st amendment rights, under the guise of “private security”? 1st amendment rights to which you are supposed to be so dedicated and willing to die for?
Are they really conscious of the fact that they are elected officials whose job it is to represent EVERYONE in order to secure the civil rights and liberties of ALL Americans, rather than just protect those who happen to be on the “right” side of the aisle.
How can you be representing a government “for the people” and actively seek to make enemies of said people?
Your. Own. People.
Isn’t that, like, a betrayal of the very oath of office that you took and swore to uphold?
If we’re taking about more than hardcore, I have bizarrely incongruous tastes in music – rock and metal of all kinds (my favourite genre being tanzmetall), hardcore and, uhm, jazz. Yeah. Don’t ask how those three have anything to do with eachother, I don’t understand it either. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I like most genres of music though electropop is a big fave. I saw Erasure live in Manchester on Sunday and it moved me so much when they sang “Blue Savannah” that I cried. Ah my youth. So I’ve been listening to them, Soft Cell/Marc Almond and The Pet Shop Boys pretty heavily since.
Gawd, I love music. There isn’t a genre I don’t like. That was one of the things that got me about the Manchester attack. It’s a minor thing of course in the grand scheme, but it was an (incidental) attack on live music. Gigs can be one of the most exciting and exhilarating things ever. It saddens me that there may be kids now who, understandably, are put off that. It feels like they’ve been robbed of the possibility of some wonderfully fun experiences and memories. Mind you, if there’s one thing Manchester is good at, it’s bouncing back. There’ll obviously be a poignancy about the benefit concert, but I hope it’s packed full of kids having a defiantly wonderful time.
Just want to point out that some people with disabilities have had their day ruined by all the jokes about the misspelling.
We might want to take it easy on those and on jokes about “idiots” and people with limited capacity in general.
All the jokes about how stupid and crazy evil people are are starting to wear some folks down.
Kinda late to the thread, missing a lot of responses I meant to make; new work schedule has me on overnights, and long hours to boot.
@Fran
To fight Nazis. That’s the part that they’re leaving out: the modern computer was invented for the express purpose of kicking Nazi ass.
@Collateral Thought
Except that hardly anyone actually had or fielded longbow units, on account of not having trained the grandparents of their conscripts in their use. That’s the great advantage to a crossbow, and later a musket: Some random farm kid can be taught to use one adequately for the battle line in a couple months. (A second advantage of the musket, from the perspective of kings, is that it was possible to keep tabs on gunmakers and keep large supplies of muskets a royal monopoly.)
@Bina
Also, there were peasant rebellions all the hell over the place throughout the midevial and early modern eras in Europe. Many of which were pretty damn socialist.
@Lea
QFT
Lea,
Are you referring to the covfefe thing?
I’m happy to drop it if you like.
Jesus, last time I was here this thread had only about 30 comments. I go to bed, get up, check WHTM for new articles, and it has 510 comments! What the hell have I missed? Could someone summarize? Has there been a particularly persistent troll, or something?
@abars
Two of them.
@SFHC
Thank you! ?
@Lea
Fair
@JS
Yes, it is supposed to be Hungarian, though the artist is Canadian. He apparently based the album off of a dream he had about being a pigeon in Hungary. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the song names make no sense; he’s a bit bizarre. Some of his other albums include “Chocolate Wheelchair”, “Songs About My Cats”, and “Winnipeg is a Frozen Shithole.” Honestly, while I love this album, most of his other stuff is far too dissonant to me. I honestly think that most of the time he’s trying to figure out the most awful sounds that people will still pay money for.
@dslucia
Have you listened to Protest the Hero? I’m not huge into metal/mathcore but they are one of my faves. Good ol’ Canadian boys, with decent politics to boot. One of my favorite songs off their most recent album is a criticism of rape culture:
@ dalillama
There’s a new book out about the Levellers. One thing I didn’t know (amongst many) is that the Jefferson family always gave at least one kid the middle name Lilburne.
@Lea said it much more eloquently than I could have, so I’ll just echo them and add my little voice in asking that people take it a little easier on spelling mistakes. Some people have difficulties with reading and writing correctly through no fault of their own (I’m deliberately avoiding all terms that could be seen as ableist or Internet diagnosis-y). Personally, I used to have a lot of trouble with dyslexia and dysnumeria as well, but I was able to learn to cope with my eyes and my brain getting things wrong, although of course sometimes things revert back to the bad old days, especially when I’m tired or anxious.
So I want to thank you all for being considerate to those of us who aren’t good at speaking up.
@dslucia
Just realized while a great song, that’s really not the best example of their “metal/mathcore” potential. I’ll avoid another embed, but recommend also looking up “Sequoia Throne”.
On another forum, someone wrote about snow melt forming poodles in the arctic sea ice, and how this meant there would be a lot of sea ice melt, yada yada we’re all doomed.
It happened once, ok, amusing typo. Then again, someone makes a joke. A third time, and someone *very gingerly* pipes up that perhaps there’s been an error and that the writer should be aware the word is “puddles” not “poodles”.
The author was gracious in accepting the correction 😉
@dlouwe:
I have a strange history with listening to Protest the Hero, actually. I was really into their first album Kezia, but for whatever reason I never kept up with them after it. I sporadically listened to a few tracks on Fortress and then after that they kinda fell by the wayside for me. Though, I think that’s partly because I was far more into the more chuggy core stuff at the time and hadn’t quite gotten into progressive metal yet; their more technical playing than what I typically listened to was really good, but the vocals in general didn’t jive well with me.
2008-10 was also one of the times where the expansion of “things I listen to” took a bit of a halt, as it does every few years. I mostly listened to albums that came out between 2004-08 (and, in fairness, I still love most of the stuff that I listened to from that time).
@Preuxfox
Gamergaters are the biggest snakes on the Internet right now. There’s nothing positive about their actions so far. The gamergate scandal started because of their machiavellian actions and their fake hurt feelings. They wanted to stir shit and cause a reaction against a certain category of people and they keep doing it.
The ones working for HeatStreet piss me off the most. They claim to be independents but keep catering to the alt-right or the right in general.
On music:
I’m actually more inclined towards video game OSTs than, y’know, mainstream music. Recently got into the music of the Yakuza series, and Dark Souls has also been one of my favorites for good songs.
@new mammotheers
Some random person on the internet welcomes you!
@dslucia
That’s fair enough! Vocals can really make or break the enjoyment. Also I tend to gravitate more towards technicality than the chugga chugga. Though I did have a similar experience with them: I listened to Kezia to death and it will forever be one of my favourite albums (I got to see their 10-year Kezia tour, *fanboy squeal*). I also listened to Fortress a lot, but then Scurrilous didn’t really grab my attention, and I fell off for a while. Volition, however, kicks all kinds of ass (they got Chris Adler on drums for the album and he nails it.)
ETA: They also have a song on Volition called “Tilting Against Windmills” that is essentially an ode to entitled straight white trolls. Technically it’s talking more about homophobia, but a lot of the lyrics can be read as a general promotion of tolerance.
I’ll need someone to help me avoid glowsticking myself in the head. I’m not very good at swinging around rope either, but a flog or some other instrument of thud and thwack I can do.