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.
Darn. You mean all those times I did the twirl and told my little sister she could be Drusilla but *I* was playing Diana I was encroaching on male turf? And the Halloween costume I made one year, complete with golden lasso?
My childhood has hurt so many men and I didn’t know.
@Gussie Jives
I’m guessing you have maybe 5 years on me, but yes, similar backgrounds = similar tastes, for sure.
Fully Completely is my favourite Hip album, hands down. I don’t have Phantom Power! I should check it out.
The other Canadian (in source and in subject matter) album in my collection that gets constant play is Joel Plaskett’s Ashtray Rock. It might be a “where I was in my life when it came out” thing, but I adore that record.
I have to also state for the record how much I loved the Shiny Tunes albums. I had 2, 3, 4, and 5 for sure. Not sure about 6. I waited for 2 for so long, because I was getting it for my birthday. It was months, I waited.
I also loved The Tea Party so much. Partly it was in response to the music my younger sister listened to, I think. Tea Party had cool sounding songs, with a lead singer who sounded like an adult and not a whiny teenager. (Oh Blink, I was never one of your fans.)
For a (slightly) more current Canadian tune, I present Headphones, by the Mounties:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfNB-RtqEyY
Oh! Another Canadian band, USS. Here’s Laces Out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na_Wm098H9A
I really like these guys, their songs are so fun. Also their live shows aren’t quite like this, but I was at one of their shows and they have great stage presence. Also I almost killed Human Kebab by not being strong enough to catch him when he jumped on me to crowd surf. I basically caught him with my entire body and used my foot to keep him from hitting the ground. That was some of the longest four seconds of my life!
Since this thread is completely off topic…anyone playing RiME? Which version should I get, between XBone and PS4?
Edit: https://medium.com/@BethyBSQU/alamo-drafthouse-apologizes-for-starting-manpocalypse-with-women-only-screening-ccf6f4090a14
@Viscaria
Phantom Power doesn’t have a lot in the way of earworm singles the way Fully Completely does, but its charm is in how cohesive it is in tone. Each track flows nicely from one to the next, almost like it’s relating a long-form poem. “Bobcaygeon” is the stand-out track from that album, but the lead single “Poets” is solid (and has an awesome music video where Gord is wandering through a dilapidated home filled with cats) and “Fireworks” is a quirky tune that references the ’72 Summit Series.
Funny that you mention Joel Plaskett; he was the opening act for the Hip on that Canada Day gig I saw in ’04!
@Rhuu
BST 8 was the last of that series I bought — by then music trends had gone from the post-grunge alt-rock that dominated late-90s radio to nu-metal like Linkin Park and the pop-punk of groups like (ugh) Blink-182 and Sum 41. BST 5 was showing shades of it when I hit my first Limp Bizkit track and by BST 6, the writing was on the wall when I had to trudge through Linkin Park and Blink as the first two tracks. I stuck with the series through 7 and 8 just hoping for a hidden gem or two, but I can only take so many compilations with Sum 41 on it before I want to start using them as frisbees.
The Tea Party was a nice constant fixture, but I just bought their albums when I wanted to listen to Jeff Martin’s glorious voice. And Billy Talent was a welcome surprise.
@kupo
Xbone version seems to have slighty better reviews.
I don’t know if this is a good choosing method but there isn’t enough info online about the quality difference on the two platforms.
Wow. That’s just critical empathy failure right there. I haven’t been reading much news because I’ve been trying to recover from a really bad depression relapse, but this is just so awful.
The amount of people trying to reimagine the murder victims as violent is sickening. Yes, we know this man slashed these men in the throat but at least he didn’t lightly shove someone and tell them to stop harassing teenage girls!
And of course one of the surviving heroes is autistic but the media doesn’t mention it (so far that I’ve seen). they only go into depth about someone being on the spectrum if they’ve been helplessly victiminized or are committing crimes themselves. :/
It’s such a tragic waste of life. Good men died because of a fucking Nazis freeze peaches.
@wwth
Oh. Oh. Darn it, I’ve been doing this whole “feeeemaaaaale” thing SO wrong. For SO long.
If only I’d had Trollman
blaring trumpet fanfare
to guide me.
To quote myself from elsewhere: “Neurotypical men attack neuroatypical man, Internet immediately declares attackers neuroatypical and victim neurotypical.”
You take that back, heathen!
Wow. Lots of comments!
Monday I prepared food for a potluck which turned out to be a lousy time. (I may have to recount in the next open thread.)
Tuesday I assembled one of my Ikea drawer units (draaaawerrrsss!) and wasn’t online much.
Yesterday I came upon this thread (at 8 pages) and only read up to page 10 because I blew off my emails Tuesday as well and had to catch up.
Today I’m on page 12 and working on the other drawer unit.
tl;dr – I’m still here, mostly reading. Hi and welcome to the new folks!
@Scented fucking hard chairs
Sounds about right. I remember reading school shooter stories that were all like “he seemed to have spatial issues and avoid touch, he walked weird, he had a strange cadence in his voice” and whenever an autistic person does something good that isn’t inspirational for the neurotypicals it gets glossed over.
that’s why I’m kind of uneasy about people focusing on certain aspects of politicians that make them look neuroatypical. It feels like they’re saying all progressives are neurotypical and reactionaries are neuroatypical.
I just hope this man recovers and gets the therapy he’ll need for seeing such horrific violence. And I also hope he never meets someone who thinks he and his fellow heroes deserved to get stabbed in real life. I’d add online too but I have a sickening feeling at some point someone has already sent some kind of ugly message to him online 🙁 it almost seems inevitable at this point
because again, Nazi free speeches are more important than the lives and safety of marginalized people, as far as too many people are concerned.
I WANT YOU TO KNOOOOOOOOOW
WITH EVERYTHING, I WON’T LET THIS GOOOO
THESE WORDS ARE MY HEART AND SOUL!
OT: The US has officially withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accords:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/futurism.com/its-official-trump-just-withdrew-the-u-s-from-the-paris-climate-agreement/amp/
Just what you wanted to hear, right?
>.<
The only recording artist I feel strongly enough about to consider myself a fan of is Sananda Maitreya, perhaps better remembered as Terence Trent D’Arby. I flew to New York City to see his last performance in the United States, and it was worth it.
I’ve had a long relationship with jazz. For a long time, I wanted to listen to it but didn’t think I was the kind of person who *should* be listening to it. I’m not a musician, and don’t intuitively get things like syncopation, chord changes, or even key changes. I went through a rigorous program of self-education and ear training, and now I listen to it daily.
My husband has assured me that my approach to music is highly idiosyncratic.
@RedSilkPhoenix – yeah, I guess Drumpfie just couldn’t cope with the U.S. being a world leader anymore, so he has made certain we aren’t.
@Redsilkphoenix: Jetpack Vixen, Agent of the FemiNest Collective; Keeper of a Hell Toupee, and all-around Intergalactic Meanie
It’s a bit logical that a person who hires people who pollute cause it’s cheap to be the heads of the epa and other organizations would also do this. I can’t believe that Captain Planet is now less satire and more “this is what rich assholes do”
@Dreemr: that Lynda Carter KISS thing is a little love.
@Ooglyboggles Its like they genuinely hate the environment or something. It’s really hard to look forward to anything with them in charge.
just like, why even bother. They’re going to ruin the world and nothing can stop them. they don’t care because they’re making money and are rich enough to be cushioned away from the effects of global warming.
The people that will be most harmed by global warming are the people least contributing to it, like people around the Sahara desert in Africa. (literally they’re trying to get the money to plant trees all around the border of the Sahara to try to prevent further expansion)
This world is run by the most corrupt and cruel people. They’re a tide of money, propaganda and militaristic might. I just don’t see any hope for the future.
@Victoria
It’s like they have an age old grudge against the common folk who’ve all instituted unions, safety and environmental standards and this is their petty act of “if i can’t have it my way no one will.” Frigging EXXON Mobile of all people said that Trump shouldn’t pull out of the Paris Agreement.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-31/exxon-conoco-back-paris-climate-deal-as-trump-weighs-pact-exit
One of many oil monopolies who decided to bleed the planet for profit told Trump that he was going too far. Figures, parasites tend to not want their hosts to die. What’s even more damning, but at least has some semblance of a way out is that we still got up to 2020 to reverse this decision. It’s shit like this that makes me wonder why I even bother trying to reach my representatives every day about these endless issues.
The right hates the environment just to bother the left. Remember when it was a trend a few years ago for right wingers to rig their pick up trucks to spew out exhaust? They did just for the sake of bothering progressives. It’s called coal rolling
http://www.newsweek.com/coal-roller-257884
Never be afraid ascribe the most childish and petty motive you can think of to the actions of a fascist. Trump is doing this to troll Democrats and/or progressives at home and piss off other world leaders.
Whatever good Obama did, this charlatan is seeking to undo, because his envy of Obama is palpable.
This is such a sad, sad state of affairs.
Mammotheers, this is tangentially related to the climate talk.
I had a horrible dream a few weeks ago that it was too hot to walk around outside. Like, if you went outside, it was physically painful and you would feel like you are going to die. You could only go out at night.
You might say that this is reality already for people in equatorial places.
I feel like my nightmare is going to become reality.
Oh, and Trump opted not make any kind of proclamation in support of pride month. Clinton and Obama did when they were in office.
Remember when some of Trump’s supporters were trying to claim he wasn’t homophobic and transphobic? Yeah right.
Anyway, happy pride month to all the LGBTQ Mammotheers!