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.
@ Troubelle;
Just a few minutes googling “xxxx rhyme” and “xxxx synonym” and that’un wrote itself!!
Back to music, another Casey Neill tune, “The Holy Land”, concerns a mid-19th century saloon and rat-baiting* joint ran by one “Kit” Burns (one of the founders of the Dead Rabbits, see “Gangs of New York”) at 273 Water Street, and his next-door neighbor, John Allen (the wickedest man in New York)… and Henry Burge, the founder of the ASPCA
after I heard the song, I of course googled the characters and places… the building where Burns’ saloon was (the third oldest building in New York, fyi) is now a $everal million dollar apartment building!!
And on that obscurely irrelevant note, I gotta go beddie-bye….
*google at your own risk
@Grand High Adjutant Mish, Hand of the Empress
It fills me with joy to please my steadfast followers, truly, they are the channels through which my divine will is made manifest upon this imperfect world.
I have the utmost confidence in your ability. Also, this Mei-mei pleases me greatly.
@Ray
You’re welcome. Admittedly, I’ve been getting into nightcore, myself. Any speedy electronic music is just my thing.
@Weird
Yeah just like every other space men complain about being corrupted: sports, comics, workplace etc.
@Mish your cat is adorable!! ❤
I always love Mei-Mei pictures. She’s so pretty!
Bina,
Thanks for mentioning L.M. Montgomery.
Reading strings of run off drivel that seems to trail off before any point forms soured me on ellipses. But, yes, some respectable authors have used this punctuation effectively.
I also love the work of e.e. cummings, capital letters be damned.
@JS: Weird Eddie’s song *is* set to an existing tune:
@Mish:
OH MY GAWD, LOOK AT ALL THAT FWUFF!!!
*Ahem!*
But, yeah, cute kitty. Kinda reminds me of my cat, Lady Felicia Der Flüffen Gilgamesh (yes – I gave her a full name and title), given she’s a calico too.
@Ray of Rays:
That’s kind of what I loved about it – all the silence really accentuates the music, once it occurs.
Re: music
I’ve been obsessively listening to Gorillaz these days due to the recent album, which I liked well enough, though I’m practically obsessed with Childish Gambino’s “Awaken, My Love!”
I very rarely visit this blog any more, but this story very much captured my attention.
The thing is, Elam & his cronies are diluted and made increasingly irrelevant by the generic tide of alt-right social media outbursts that have recently become commonplace.
Elam thirsts for attention. Given his childish temperament and awful standard of writing and non-existent networking skills, he attracts only a statistically insignificant pool of similarly dysfunctional people to him.
Consider for a moment. His blog has been an abject failure. It’s declined and declined in popularity. He stopped doing fundraisers when they stopped working (and if you research this, it seems that there was basically one wealthy buy being bled dry for donations.)
So what’s a not-very-employable guy to do when his gender extremist gravy train stop?
Maybe try and appeal to another strain of angry, disaffected weaklings?
He has previously claimed to be non-political, then came out for Trump. He Tweeted that painfully obvious attention grab to the Ann Frank Institute and recently Tweeted about “white nationalism.”
He’s looking for a home, basically. He’s a total failure, who recognises this and is trying to get the attention is needs.
Buzzfeed killed him, well, that, this blog, and the fact that he alienates most everyone he “works” with (that is, exploits.)
I wonder what will become of this unpleasant blight on humanity?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAbgNJjXcAUZ_Wk?format=jpg
Fingie’s dating profile pic.
Why won’t my twitpics end with dot jpg anymore? 🙁
I love Sakuraba’s work, too– the wife and I are playing (in my case re-playing) Star Ocean 2 now and I’m grooving on some of his better stuff there. I also loved his contributions to Chrono Cross and Valkyrie Profile– the latter a game that you might want to try if you haven’t before, Francesca, as it’s right up your alley.
Also, I’ve noticed one other major contributing factor to ballooning comment page counts: When there hasn’t been a new post to siphon off discussion in 24 hours, the last post tends to accrue a much bigger comments section.
Oh, super same. I wasn’t sure about Humanz at first – some of my least-favourite tracks were the first to make an impression (Momentz, Sex Murder Party.) But, the rest have since really grown on me. I think Plastic Beach might still be my favourite of their albums, though.
I’m enjoying the happy hardcore. My favourites are the Bonkers albums. Goddamn I wish I was young and it was 1996 again.
Very amusing troll hunt, worth reading 12 pages for. One is so far up his own ass he thinks he is the god of patriarchy and the other one doesn’t understand words. No Checkersman, the bully is the murderer with the knife, not the innocent victims, it’s not opposite day.
Mei-Mei is humbly delighted with the compliments
@Mish
Aww, those sweet furry faces.
OT
Mammotheers, I spend a few hours away from the Internet and come back to Troll Central! With almost 600 comments!
Okay, I’ll just leave this here. The Trumps are sorry excuses for human beings, including Ivanka, the charming one:
Chinese activists probing Ivanka Trump’s factories have gone missing
Two men were looking into labor abuses at an Ivanka Trump clothing factory in China. They’ve since disappeared
http://www.salon.com/2017/05/31/chinese-activists-probing-ivanka-trumps-factories-have-gone-missing/
@JS
Your translations from the previous page were mostly spot on except:
Closer to “Ambulance that was made to dissolve/decompose” – Makes just as much sense (not much)
Thanks to double meanings this could also be “Stupid Bird”
“Double Heeled Movement”
“Nobody’s Song”
@Diptych:
I was particularly fond of “Submission” and “We Got The Power”, and as far as all their albums go, I really liked Plastic Beach – I’m still rather partial to Demon Days and some tracks on D-Sides like “Hong Kong” and the Schtung Chinese New Year remix of “Dirty Harry”:
https://youtu.be/wEcuQlm6Ex4
https://youtu.be/XXRiZoIXypA
As far as videogame music goes – given their recent game is now available for pre-order (I’m tempted!) – I’d suggest the soundtracks of Supergiant Games’ titles, Bastion and Transistor. A few examples:
https://youtu.be/qyUokbOxBPY
https://youtu.be/XkI1AvH7ro4
https://youtu.be/XSGxYnnwcLg
https://youtu.be/pbTgi_gLppQ
@Mish:
THE CUTENESS IS OVERWHELMING!!!
Speaking of white-knighting, I suspect the usual bonkeyheads are howling at Austin’s mayor this week:
http://www.mayoradler.com/letter-wonder-woman/
@ Z & T:
Welcome!
I’m new here too. I don’t post here often, and when I do, it’s too frequently driven by animus and scorn towards trolls. That’s… not often constructive or popular, but it’s an outlet.
I prefer being supportive and helpful. That’s a struggle; not because I want to be otherwise, but because I’m bitter and cynical.
I wish you happiness and prosperity, and regret that you had to live through all that bullshit.
@ Mish:
Awww, they are absolutely splendid. Mei-Mei is positively regal, and Noodle Crab (I hope I didn’t misidentify the other kitty) is adorable.
There was an old top-down tank game for the 3DO called Return Fire that played different classical music depending on what vehicle you were using; Mars by Holst for the tank, In the Hall of the Mountain King for the APC, Ride of the Valkyries for the helicopter (because of course), and Flight of the Bumblebee for the jeep. But the best thing was that when you weren’t in combat, just picking your way through the trees, the game would play the quiet, opening section of the piece – then, when you were in combat, it would switch to the ‘crescendo’ section. The transition was always really smooth, and I think it was the first instance of ‘dynamic’ game music that I’d ever come across.
Around the same time there was also Quarantine, again for the 3DO, which had an awesome soundtrack of (I think largely Australian) 90s grunge bands (including Screamfeeder and Sidewinder, surely two of the 90s-est rock band names ever): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MD5W-obdpY
Dayum, Mayor Adler spat so much fire at that troll he could be an honorary Mammotheer. Nice.
It was a nice cleansing flame, wasn’t it?
Re: that mayor’s letter
Well sure, you invented life rafts; but then you want exclusive use of them; whilst throwing men into the ocean, like that lass in Titanic.
(Seriously though that’s a brilliant letter. Love the snark.)