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.
@Cynical Optimist:
You wouldn’t happen to be a fellow fan of the Deus Ex: Human Revolution soundtrack, would you? #leadingquestions
@dlouwe:
It’s funny, because I’ve got a fair few of my own bands where the vocals will make or break them for other people, even people who normally love harsh vocals. One of my favorite bands is Between the Buried and Me, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better example of “your mileage may vary” when it comes to a person’s screams. (Though, I think his vocal work has improved dramatically over the past decade.)
@dslucia
Oh yes, BTBAM. For me it’s less the vocals, and more how frenetic they are; it’s like metal for hummingbirds. Basically I need to listen to their songs a couple times before I can enjoy them, which ends up being pretty exhausting. I did that for Colours – which I love FTR – but I just can’t bring myself to do it for another album. (To be fair, my exposure to them is limited, so their newer stuff might be considerably different)
My most vocally divisive band is probably La Dispute. I saw them open for Alexisonfire and fell in love immediately. Super talented musically (technical post-hardcore), but the vocals are very love or hate. Mostly alternating between spoken word and screaming, sooorta reminiscent of At the Drive In, except whinier, which really doesn’t sound appealing on paper at all. But the singer is so emotive that if he doesn’t put you right off he pulls you right in.
@Aulma, nice to meet you, too! Hope you stick around a while.
@Checkmate, I admit, 20% to Wonder production and a unique Chariot unit are inclined toward the start of the game, and little help when people are racing towards Alpha Centauri.
I think I am going to try for about 4 or 5 cities, rather than spreading all over the map like I usually do. I covered almost a whole continent as Siam, and then my Arabia game was all archipelagoes and small islands, which weren’t so much fun to colonize.
@Falconer, I tend to run for 6-7 good cities, but I play wide, so none of my cities are going to have full area coverage or all of the buildings. Thats just me, though, and that’s probably not ideal.
re: music
Bringing it back to the start: while I enjoy most genres to an extent (save what passes for country on the radio these days–blech), Pendulum is a precious little thing of mine and I’ve enjoyed them since I started listening. (It’s a bit broken now, but I’ve no quarrel with the result of Knife Party.)
That said, I also enjoy a fellow by the alias of Savant. Dude generates good content and does it rapidly, and it really runs the gamut. (Though I’ve been a bit scared to check his affiliations…)
@dlouwe:
Colors is undoubtedly their best album, and I’d say that “Viridian” + “White Walls” is their best song, period (because both songs complement each other too well to be taken apart, imo).
I’d say everything of theirs since Alaska, the album before Colors, is worth listening to, but it definitely takes a certain mindset. The Great Misdirect is a fairly hard sell just because, as you say, the songs are very frenetic. “Disease, Injury, Madness” and “Fossil Genera – A Feed From Cloud Mountain” are both very strange tracks that take the sorts of things they did with “Ants of the Sky” from Colors and crank it up to 11, and “Swim to the Moon” is nearly the same length as a serial television show all by itself with a very, very lengthy instrumental interlude that can make it incredibly hard to follow if you’re not paying attention to the song, and incredibly boring to follow if you’re not into what they’re actually doing.
They kinda eased up on things after that, though! The Parallax is an EP + LP combo set of concept albums that is structured in a far more straightforward manner (though just because they couldn’t make things too accessible, it uses a narrative that Tommy Giles sort-of-kind-of-maybe established all the way back with a song on their second album, The Silent Circus and has woven a few tracks into the narrative with nearly every album). Their newest album, Coma Ecliptic, is probably their most accessible. They’ve been moving more toward classic progressive metal ever since Colors and Coma Ecliptic is kinda the full realization of that change (it doesn’t even have any songs that are over ten minutes long!).
*cough*
It’s actually a little funny how much I like BTBAM, because when I first heard them thanks to “Selkies: The Endless Obsession” back in 2006 or so, that was the only song I liked by them and I thought everything else was pretty bad.
Re: Music
So I see we’re doing a ‘music biography’ type thing where we identify the different years we began listening to our favorite genres, and what our lives were like at that time. I like this a lot.
I just finished exercising and will dedicate these few moments between now and showering to rejoin the conversation while I let my whey protein supplement drink digest, and, yes, of course, your elegant and powerful Black Goddess-Empress is glowing and fabulous in her post-workout radiance, thank you very much, and I am displaying much muscle tone and low bodyfat.
My music tastes break off into two huge subsections: Electronic and non-electronic, conventional instrument stuff.
I’ll begin with the Electronic Dance Music.
I began in the 1990’s and up to 2002 as a normal American kid who wasn’t really aware of anything and enjoyed normal consumer culture. I spent time reading a lot of books and thought shopping and videogames and sports were all that really mattered. I was into BMX freestyle bicycling and rollerblading. I am probably the best rollerblader on here, although I will gladly concede my title to anyone else who is good at rollerblading. I never understood skateboarding; I always felt the increased speed and control you could get with rollerblades was better.
Anyway, so yeah, I started out listening to high-energy dance music and trance music then like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqFNzRaOEvE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLZQ-0dHbiU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s4FZb-a8kk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3GmC1HDx08
If you asked me what I wanted to do back then, as a 7-year-old, I would have told you I wanted to rollerblade and do what is in that last music video all day: drive a Dodge Viper GTS and go to raves all day.
Around then 9/11 happened and I began to become aware of the political situation as our rights began to be removed from us as W legislated PATRIOT act 1, and police presence became much heavier. I knew since then things had changed violently.
As a preteen around 10 to 12 years old, my tastes diversified as I began reading more medieval fantasy fiction such as the Lord of the Rings and all the assorted supplements such as the Book of Lost Tales, the Silmarillion, The Children of Hurin, the Hobbit, Redwall, and The Wheel of Time.
This was where I became a big Medieval Europe fandom person of the sort that goes to renfaires and collects swords and armor and whatnot. My deepest wish was to live in an actual castle in England, which I believe I’ve mentioned here before.
In my early teens, around age 13-15, I began listening to a lot of Eurodance and Eurotrance at this time, and obscure subgenres like orchestral trance, such as this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLhbxehnr4s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GusLypfx7OQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs2CNUWy9lo
That last track by E Nomine, by the way, is the anthem of Empress Francesca I’s Grand Nubian Space Invasionary Fleet, just so you know.
Around this time I also basically became a Goth and wore lots of tight black leather clothing, leather gloves, leather boots, and so on and had an exclusively black wardrobe.
I also became interested in Neopaganism and hung out with other witches and participated in covens and whatnot. Later on I would cement myself with the Nordic Asatruar religion, but for a while I had floated about in the general Neopagan culture.
In retrospect, I was, actually, a pansexual, transgender child and teen, but since my parents effectively kept me ignorant of all these things and the Internet was still quite rudimentary, I lacked understanding and insight of these things.
In 2004 I discovered anime and Japanese videogames and Japanese pop culture in general, and grew interested in motorsports. That was when I started listening to Eurobeat and Hyper Techno. I also became obsessed with auto racing and the JDM import tuner scene.
It is impossible to talk about Eurobeat without talking about Velfarre, which was THE largest disco in Japan at that time, and hosted several floors of people dancing their asses off to Eurobeat and Hyper Techno. Velfarre marked the Golden Age of Eurobeat and Hyper Techno. It was massively popular in Japan then.
There were other clubs like Maharaja in Tokyo’s Roppongi district, which also played a lot of Eurobeat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyze0bPNjmk
During this time, the motorsport known as Drifting was really popular in Japan as well. Mind you, I used to watch the Japan Grand Touring Car championship races as well, but what I really liked was drifting.
If you asked 15-year-old Fran what she wanted to do, she would have said she wanted to move to Japan and compete in the local Drifting scene there with her own Mazda RX-7 FC3S, with the rotary engine, custom shocks, and a bunch of the interior stuff removed to make it lighter, and go to Eurobeat events at these clubs and fully immerse myself in the prevailing culture of that time.
I also used to play Counter-Strike obsessively and was in a semi-professional gaming clan. I wanted to become an E-Sports champion back then, but my father rapidly put an end to that idea, which has distressed me up until now. I look at the people currently competing in e-sports and bitterly remember when my father insisted playing videogames for money was never going to be a thing, ever.
There was an entire subculture set up around Eurobeat, as with most music genres. It was very much synthetic and manufactured, now that I come to think about it, and yet we used to enjoy it while being totally aware of how manufactured it was. You would either dress up as a Gyaru or Kogyaru, if you were a girl, or an Ikemen, if you were a boy, and dance Para Para. This was hugely popular for a while; at one time Tokyo Disneyland used to play Eurobeat music and host Para Para Dance events.
Yes, that’s right. You could go to Tokyo and watch Mickey Mouse and the Disney Princesses dance to Eurobeat.
[bravely struggles not to cry while remembering that she never got to do this]
Anyway, yes, I also fell off of being Gothy and dark and leathery and kinky back then and became fully immersed in Japanese pop culture.
I also began listening to Japanese House Music and House Music in general, which had gained popularity at that time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1uvY7VoJjM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNTEgngcSIc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzmpwHcwBlI
I fully intended to go there at one point in time. I was seriously going to do it, too, but then disaster struck in my life, possibly part of what triggered my depression, and my hopes and dreams were essentially canceled.
This was in 2009. I then went into a fucking tailspin of depression and stopped giving a shit about everything and my life more or less fell the fuck apart for a while, and I became a dull person who stayed inside, became socially anxious, developed insomnia and irritability and all kinds of nervous shit I never had before, and wrote fanfiction and roleplayed and listened to old Eurobeat tracks and wore fucking sweaters and t-shirts like a fucking idiot for the longest time.
I’m actually not too upset my life fell apart, because if it hadn’t, I probably never would have been forced to examine myself and realize that I had to stop chasing the stupid masculine ideal and just be a fucking girl who likes hardcore sports like rollerblading and throwing Japanese sports cars around corners at very high speeds.
Also, I would never have become as politically conscious as I am now if I hadn’t experienced hardship. I might have gone on to be one of those awful, dull people who says shit like, “UM, I don’t FOLLOW POLITICS. I don’t care about it.”
Anyway.
Moving on to non-electronic music:
As I’ve mentioned before, I grew up in the Star Wars fandom since I was 9 years old and watched The Phantom Menace and then the older movies. That was how I began to like orchestral, sweeping music of the sort John Williams makes.
I also found out about Dune, Star Trek, Warhammer 40k, and all the other popular sci-fi stuff, which is why I enjoy the whole created universe the Hoteps have made about how black people are secretly God-Emperors and Goddess-Empresses of the Known Universe who are fighting the Chaotic White Males and White F(eeeeeeeee)males in an ironic sense.
I, of course, don’t seriously think I am an immortal Goddess-Empress, but damn if that doesn’t just remind you of some Dune or Star Wars. Neat stuff.
Anyway, I also listen to bagpipes. I fucking love bagpipes. Love them.
For a short while I was obsessed with Scotland. Fear not, Sir Alan; my allegiance is and always with the British Crown, it is just that I share the 6th Earl of Surrey’s fascination with the Scots and would like to add Scottish territory to my lands.
I listen to the anthems of countries and patriotic music from various contries merely to enjoy it, which is why I am familiar with the Rule Britannia.
So, to revisit my earlier points: If I am to be Goddess-Empress, I demand that there be three capitals; one in England, where Sir Alan will rule as Hand of the Empress in my absence, one in Japan – the regional title of Hand here is still open, if one of you would like a place, and one in Iceland, where Lady Bina of the Imperial Cohors Germanorum will monitor the Imperial Fleet, which looks a lot like the British Royal Navy did circa 1940-1950, except it can also travel through space (watch Space Battleship Yamato for more information about this) and my Royal Marines.
Checkmate, imagine my face when I discovered that I had to pay upkeep for every hex of roads, which I don’t recall from earlier versions. If I connect cities to my capital, I get like +5 gold per connection — so I break even with 5 hexes of road. Clearly a dense web of cities is the way to go if I want to have road connections.
With Siam, I wasn’t paying attention, but I wasn’t hurting for coin, so I was clearly offsetting my roads.
With Egypt, I am pretty much bound by Byzantium to the north and Greece to the south, so I have filled in almost all the hexes, and I just have to hope I get oil and aluminum and uranium in my territory when I unlock them.
I never do manage to build up a big army, whichever Civ I am playing.
Also, I am not sure I am going to pick up Civ 6 any time soon. I’ll get the complete bundle in a few years, probably.
@dlouwe:
Oh, and on a similar note re: vocals alternating between spoken word and screaming, I very recently actually got back into mewithoutYou, a band I hadn’t actively listened to since (you guessed it) 2008 or so. I randomly figured I’d see what they were up to these days and looked up their latest album, Pale Horses, and holy wow, it floored me.
I don’t know how to embed here, but this is probably my favorite song from the album.
EDIT: Oh, looks like the embed worked. Okay then!
Small update on that Trump tweet:
Uh huh. The man can’t even admit he hit “send” before completing the tweet.
Next: Trump declares autocorrect “the enemy of the people.”
@dslucia
Finally done with my shift, sorry about that. My favorites from Human Revolution are Icarus and First and Last. The wailing vocals are what really makes it for me.
Did anyone else listen this band Does It Offend You Yeah? I copy from one british 4/e i sail with. Only one album but fuck they good! I never heard them before but i dont know if they more famous in Uk maybe. I like all music – mainly not on english though but i like old rock and roll like motorhead, the specials, madness and things like that.
@PeeVee the (Timber-Rattling Booger Slut, But Noice) Sarcastic
The following executive orders become vague shapes, photos and soundbytes with factions forming and arguing over who has the one true interpretation.
Okay, dslucia, how do you imbed vids? I can’t seem to get the hang of that!
@PeeVee the (Timber-Rattling Booger Slut, But Noice) Sarcastic
Post the link of the video, if it doesn’t embed, refresh the page until the video is embedded.
You know what’s fun? Massive bedtime tantrums — I’m talking Class 3 Wobblers approaching 70 decibels and occurring with major-league toy pitching — because your sister brushed her teeth first.
Everything seems to have got quiet now, but that won’t last.
Ooglyboggles,
http://pm1.narvii.com/5804/daec32e6ba1bdbe53b7f816b0089318952734a51_hq.jpg
Trump’s suggested encryptions.
And yeah, No True Scotsman interpretations are already happening.
Also, thanks!!
@Cynical Optimist:
“Icarus” is amazing. Probably my favorite track too, though hilariously, Opening Credits, Main Menu, and Endings all give it a run for its money. Maybe that’s not fair since they’re all relatively similar, though. XD
@PeeVee:
I just put the Youtube URL on its own line. Somehow, it worked, apparently!
@PeeVee the (Timber-Rattling Booger Slut, But Noice) Sarcastic
Did you know there is a font that uses all Unown Pokemon as letters? I didn’t know until now that there was such a thing.
http://www.dafont.com/unown.font
If you have trouble embedding youtube, be sure you are using http and not https.
@Fran,
1. My son (who has been a fan of Initial D since he was in pre-school) would read the following and instantly pledge to be your slave:
2. your post was wonderful and I would like to find the bad thing that happened to you in 2009 and smother it with kittens
3. could I apply to join your empire, pls? Perhaps I could help with the running of the antipodean outpost?
4. did you get the spoons and hugs I sent? <3
Hi again all,
I’m relatively new here too. And would post more but I’m always at a loss for words on these topics.
I have been involved with these types of men, one I did figure him out pretty quick, the other – kept his true self, and plans for me, well hidden.
This is what I worry over, and is what’s hard to put into words. Not an extreme case, those are easy to spot, someone who seems ok but does hold some of these views.
It seems a lot of men do.
Of course that could come down to the simple answer of geography for me, I have usually lived in (US Midwest) suburban areas.
It could also be that men just want to lock you down.
I was able to get free of that and moved to an urban area, known for being ‘eclectic’ and having a diverse population. I like it better here.
Not trying to run down ‘the suburban lifestyle’ either. For those who *choose* that. And like it and it works for them. For those not suited for it, have no interest in it, – it’s probably a bad idea.
Common sense would say they should find someone else but at least 3 men have tried to steer me in this direction.
Many men seem to want this lifestyle.
I don’t have the interest nor am I suited for this. But instead of finding someone who is they seem hell bent on turning me to it.
Oi. I just avoid it all completely now and have thrown myself into work instead.
@Z&T, welcome! Have a hug, a fuzzy blue blanket, and a nice drink of your choice. There’s plenty here who can relate to your experiences.
@Mish, Empress’s Hand of the Antipodes and Grand High Adjutant of the Catlady Ascendancy-Imperial Joint Intelligence Ministry
1. I’d take your son on in my Japanese Domestic Drift Team in a second. He would love it. I like to think I’m exactly the kind of cool Onee-sama Team Leader he’d enjoy racing for. I have not just the Initial D DVDs, but physical copies of the manga. I also played the Arcade Stages and have a rare Japan-only copy of the PS2 Special Stage game.
I also have all the KAIDO BATTLE Touge drift racing simulation games.
I was distraught when Initial D finished. I’m still getting over that.
2. Thank you so much. It means a lot to me. I give you full Imperial Authority to travel to 2009 and launch a full-scale attack on all the bad things that happened to me then.
3. You may indeed. Since I am a benevolent Goddess-Empress, I grant the Client State of the Catlady Ascendancy full recognition and honor your dual titles.
4. I desperately needed all those spoons and hugs; I can’t thank you enough. I give you a hug in return in recognition of the services you have rendered to the Throne.
@Z&T
We’re glad to know that you got to move to a place more your liking! Sorry that you had to deal with jerks who never cared about what you want to be.