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.
14 pages!!!!! (ﾉ･д･)ﾉ!! & happy pride month!!
Anyway
It’s clear that Trump just wants to undo everything Obama has done just because of Obama. The man could have signed something saying ‘eating dirt is bad. the research is here etc’ and Trump would have removed it while shoveling piles into his mouth.
Also.. can the meme of believing the earth is flat and the sky is a led screen die? It’s like we’re reverting back in time with this nonsense. (Following the ISS and NASA on ig and the comments are half nice and half nauseating).
http://www.governor.ny.gov/news/new-york-governor-cuomo-california-governor-brown-and-washington-governor-inslee-announce
Hope springs eternal. Who’s next? Looking at you, Oregon and Massachussetts…
@Axe
That’s nice, but I want New York to fuckin’ finally get the weed legalization bill and Single Payer Healthcare bill up and then things will be less grim around here.
They made college free to an extent around here so I’m gonna be going and finally getting a degree so that I can be treated like a normal human being.
Seriously, not having a degree around here is like saying you have no pancreas, or that you were born without eyeballs.
“WHAAAAAAT?! YOU DON’T HAVE A DEGREEEEEE?! BUT YOU’RE SO INTELLIGENT!!!????”
Maybe I didn’t fucking want to get a whole assload of student debt, you fuckups (not you personally, but the people who treat you like garbage if you don’t have a degree).
… So, uh, this is the start of the second US Civil War, right? o_O
I’m way too sober for this.
@Haise, the husky puppy
iirc, there was a joke going around during the 2012 campaign that Obama could guarantee victory if he made a speech harshly condemning mixing bleach and ammonia.
@Axecalibur: Middle Name Danger
Still waiting for single payer and free college. Gov Brown pls
@Francesca Torpedo, Femoid Special Forces Major
It’s a terrible culture for people to think that being shackled wih debt for years for a chance to get stable employment.
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
Wait until GOP officials officially hire supremecist militias for “protection.” There are already a few emboldened folk who feel they got a pass to be openly racist and want to capitalize on that.
Let me just point out that the US can’t actually “pull out” of this agreement until a few years from now, and this being a non-binding agreement… we can easily rejoin if the President and/or politics change.
This is just our “Troll In Chief” posturing for his core supporters. “Look! I succeeded at a campaign promise thing!”
Trump still sucks at being an environmentalist, but this doesn’t end the agreement, nor really make it any weaker.
Certainly seems to have made the Resistance stronger… So many cities are like “Nah, we’ll keep to the Agreement regardless of the President”
Thank goodness for “Checks and Balances” these days.
Kupo,
That Medium was sublime. Right up there with Mayor Adler’s email response.
HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!!
Also, wanna make clear the fuckers involved. We’re outta the PCA… the day after the 2020 election. So long as Trump goes, it’ll be like nothing happened climate wise. That’s not the point. Trump and The Fascists (it’s the Republicans’ new band’s name) don’t hafta actually do anything. It’s all a stunt so he can tell coal miners that he stopped to Europeans from terkin eir jerbs. NY, CA, and WA getting together to stay ‘nope’ is almost equally a stunt. It’s more an affirmation to stay on track than a plan to do anything special. And it’s a good stunt. I approve this stunt. Anything that stands up to this administration is awesome
@SFHC
Yep. Now, I’m just hoping the southern cities (fuck Jacksonville tho) and the Black Belt don’t get stuck ‘behind enemy lines’ in our red, resident states. Hey, northeast coast! If y’all could march to the sea again, but, like, not demolish Atlanta this time, that’d be fabulous…
Edit: ninjad by @JS
@SFHC
Yup. And it’s gonna last for a while so get ready.
@Axe
If it’s the day after the election wouldn’t the current administration have until inauguration day to still fuck things up, though? Sure, it’s not much time, but it can still cost lives. :'(
Edit: seriously, autocorrect, we’re back to replacing with duck again? Did you forget all my words? (I guess so, as it forgot Skyboomrooster.)
@KindaSortaHarmless
Maybe we could all start doing that, vocally and in public, whilst also announcing our damned librulllll status…
Personal thing: Can y’all help me prove to my mother that the USA kinda really sucks actually? (She shits all over socialized medicine and several other things. I need stats.)
In case you haven’t seen in, the survivor of the Portland white supremacist terrorist attack, Mica Fletcher, recorded a very touching and heartfelt message to targeted minorities.
It made me tear up.
@kupo
Sorry, you’re correct. Which makes em even fuckerier. They get free reign after their election is already over. Win, lose, safe a few more years, or last hurrah, don’t matter. They’ve got 2 1/2 months to go wild. And a Dem win in 2018 stops it from the Congressional side, but Trump loves his executive orders. Ugh. Still, let’s go states rights? The darkest timeline…
@Troubelle
Big problem, break it down smaller. Start with healthcare. What’s her issue/what are her talking points?
@Troubelle
Have you shown her the videos of law enforcement officers shooting black people dead for no apparent reason?
Apologies if the link has been posted before (14 pages are a bit much to go through), but even if it has, it deserves a repost, because this is, among other things, a clear case of ‘you keep using that word – I don’t think it means what you think it means’.
http://bettermyths.com/chivalry-isnt-dead-you-just-dont-know-what-the-fuck-it-is/
My edit time ran out, but @Troubelle should also show her the many graphs showing our low quality of life compared to other first-world nations, such as infant mortality, infrastructure, drinking water, elderly and palliative care, disease prevention, poverty, hunger, internet speed, education (our public schools are a disaster), unethical business practices such as private prison labour, air quality, public transportation, pollution….
@Axe
She doesn’t even get into specifics. It’s just, like, “all these nations with socialized healthcare aren’t as good as ‘MURRICA”.
@Fran
I get the feeling she’d either dismiss them as hoaxes or start throwing a shitfit which will involve yelling at me, and I tend to falter under pressure (read: start sobbing). Especially if it’s Mom, since she has a tendency to try to separate me from my media–and there’s nothing else for me to do here.
@Troubelle
Well, that’s the real trick, isn’t it? I expected she might respond such a way. A lot of people do. It’s amazing that people can actually think things are just peachy-pie in the States when the country is literally falling apart around our ears.
Our water is literally undrinkable in certain areas, people are dying in the street, you can’t drive around without throwing an axle out (the fact that we have to drive around like fucking 1950’s people instead of enjoying swift, fast public transportation like Germany or Japan is ridiculous in and of itself) but that’s okay, because ‘Murica.
I don’t feel safe just going outside, as a black, trans, queer person. That isn’t how someone in an elite first world country should feel.
ETA:
Also, I’m really sorry your mother treats you that way. I know what it’s like to deal with stuff like that. I really should have said that from the get go, but I was too wrapped up in my frustration about living in a giant developing nation to send you good vibes.
As you can guess, I hate it here. I hate everything about living here.
I wouldn’t be here right now if my life hadn’t fallen the fuck apart, honestly. Every day I look around me and see the U.S. falling apart, I am even more frustrated about how my future was robbed from me.
@Fran
I’m going to somewhere in Europe next week. I’m half-tempted to run off from the group and break off to Norway, where I hear that citizenship is only an application away.
That said…there is something to be said about wanting to start a revolution on home soil.
I can run away. Or I can make it better.
But which would be worth it?…
I read today the wonder woman theater is now being sued
It’s like a law that a troll has to interrupt me every time Troubelle and I start talking.
Anyway, if you get a house in Norway, let me know so I can live in your closet until I find a job.
I’ll do like Valentine said and finally become a merchant sailor. They have a shipping industry there.
@Troubelle
When they’re that resistant I try to feed them information that will lead them to the conclusion on their own. “Man, that really sucks that hip replacement surgery is so much more expensive here than Spain. I wonder what we could do to fix that?”
It’s not easy, and it takes a lot of patience, but I feel it works better than outright quoting statistics.
@ chessman
I could only bother with 2 minutes of that video; but coincidentally just as I was clicking off the guy said “chime in if I’m incorrect”, and I’m a big believer in synchronicity.
So he’s wrong about the application of the ‘fighting words’ exemption to the Portland case. He also says he can’t find anything about what actually happened. So I hope I’ll be forgiven for re-posting this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B55TSEUu1Sn2cFJSdEM2NWl0Q0E/view?usp=drivesdk
@Fran
Maybe we should attempt to exchange contacts so that don’t happen again.
@Fool’s Mate
-_-