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.
@Trollman:
That didn’t happen, you fucking terrorist sympathizer. Now piss off.
Translating…
=
“I think adult men with a history of violent threats should be able to harass 16 year old girls and scream at them for racist reasons. I’m both misogynist and racist in this respect. I also identify more with the murderer of good men trying their best than with men who actually contribute something meaningful to the world.”
@Chessman, we wouldn’t have to worry about that situation, cause we’re not assholes who shout at women in public and carry knives on us.
@Lea
“Women also invented beer.”
And that must be why women get drunk and have uninhibited, wild, animal sex with me…only to awaken the next day…deeply regretful, ashamed, remorseful and vengeful. Yeah…alcohol was a male invention. We call it ‘sexual lubricant.’ I know. I was there. I named it.
That’s the way…uh huh…uh huh…I like it. Uh huh. Uh huh. I’m the birthplace of Affirmative Consent. Were it not for me, women would still be having drunk, uninhibited sex. Feminism would have never happened. After having broke so many hearts, through me, feminism was born. I’m the alpha and omega. I’m the sun, moon, light and stars. I’m the reason magnetic north doesn’t align with true north. I named it, ‘magnetic declination’. Why? Am all bout leading women astray.
And now we are into full-blown “defend the killer” territory. The fuck, dude.
Nightbore,
Bledismise marape to skip to sing entrict enocentriage miss whole ess whole with to skip to skip the to entruct to single escap. Yough to knough th to knights. Old enough totay dispe gynocenough to immed se handric bull diage ate. Old skip the withe entrispe to knigh the to immed enough to knough to shith the knough the enough to enow bettay strate gynough to knigh totah. Blestrap. Yough to knigh to immed enocenough to se knigh the mart to immed sing enow bettah. Yough to knough totay single wite.
@Brony
@Checkmate
My personal signature OC is a tiny Zebra filly who makes hotdogs.
She evolved into a super sexy Royal Equestrian Space Marine after other people started drawing her, though.
I’m okay with these things. I say ‘personal signature OC’ because I’ve made other throwaway OCs to support my fanfics or flesh out my fanfic worlds, but they do not represent me personally.
Guys I think y’all broke the Nowtmare troll.
Huh. Is Nightmare a poorly programmed bot?
@ Francesca, yeah, I’ve used a few, but Checky’s the one who always sticks with me. He’s had a few incarnations, I think once, he was a Warhammer 40k Inquisitor, which was fun.
Okay.
I’m currently building a post-apocalyptic basketball court for my FO4 settlers
and only for my settlers, it’s totally not for me to throw raider heads through, honestand I’m still making more of my life than Night Trap and Pigeonman combined. That is sad.Hmm. I think Alan hit a sore spot with Nightmare. He’s somehow managed to try even harder at coming across like a bad ass. He’s failing even harder too.
Chessman, you are a liar, so.
http://www.geekextreme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Gif-Queen-Elizabeth-II-Giving-Finger.gif
Cowardly fuck, defending this white supremacist scum puts you in the same category.
@Checkmate
In the shared OC world my personal OC lives in (or one of them, anyway), the Royal Equestrian Space Marines are basically clones of Tracer from Overwatch. They wear skintight suits.
It’s funny because I feel like I invented the whole chipper “I SAY, you CHAPS!” English-accented girl in a tight bodysuit who shoots guns and flies aircraft before Overwatch came out. That was what my OC was.
My explanation was that she came from a Zebrican colony that belongs to the Equestrian Monarchy and thusly speaks like an Equestrian with
a Northern Equestrian accent.
I am convinced Blizzard stole her, turned her into a white woman, and made Tracer.
“That’s the way…uh huh…uh huh…I like it. Uh huh. Uh huh.”
http://cdn.meme.am/cache/instances/folder724/250×250/71675724.jpg
@weirwoodtreehugger
There’s nothing better than a women puckering during her rebellious phase. It’s both cute and sexy. Men look at her and say, “What? You want sex, right? Well then let’s have sex. I’ll do you right here.” Women say, “No. I mean I want to have sex…but you know. Ok. Let’s go have sex. We’ll talk later.”
Isn’t she the one that wiped semen in her hair thinking it was gel? How did that guy jack off and forget to wipe off the semen? I mean…who misses semen? Was it all just a big misunderstanding, or is there really more to this story? Cause you know…women. Should men just walk around with their semen on display for women to sample as hair gel? I’ve a feeling men wouldn’t have a problem with that.
PSA: Do not use alcohol as lube.
@Lea and also Axe
Whenever I encounter that kind of nonsense these days I imagine Axe saying “racists shouldn’t say X.” You’re in my head, dude. You’re in my head!
Yep, when a man stabs the shit out of three other men in defense of his right to harass non-white teenaged girls, obviously it’s gynocentrism to blame.
So Night Crap starts singing KC and the Sunshine band while trying to channeling Sympathy For The Devil?
Yeah, look out. We got a badass here.
@ Fran, that’s pretty awesome. Whenever I hear space marine, my brain goes to Warhammer, cause that’s the kind of thing I grew up doing. Of course, I no longer play such simple characters~ I play Imperial Guard. X3
@Blarglesnarfnightmare, what the hell are you even talking about at this point? I think WWTH is right, Alan did break you.
Yeah the troll has turned into…God knows what. Banhammer time I think.
Also seconding that he must be about 13. Sounds a lot like one of those Urban Dictionary edgelords that submit any word they can think of as any dumbass sex act they can think of.
@PeeVee
That animation is…really, really hi-def.
is beautifullllllllll
@Nightbluh
A bigger point: water hasn’t always been automatically safe to drink. Sanitization plants are a very recent development, and before that, any water could’ve been contaminated or brackish.
But alcohol–even in small amounts–has antiseptic properties.
I’ve read here and there that any civilization needs to learn how to brew alcohol. This is why.
(The alternative is boiling the water–and coffee and tea help here.)
So, yeah. It wasn’t getting wasted–it was staying alive.
Now fuck off with your antifeminist, rape-apologist bullshit.
ETA:
…What.
Now the troll is just talking to himself.
@PeeVee
Yeah, no idea. I seem to remember some things sliding thru before on occasion, but I can’t point to any examples. Spooky *OOoooOooOOOOOooo*
@Troll Used Nightmare, It Failed
I’m thinking I know why women are always regret having sex with you. This…
…is lube
THIS…
http://mla-s2-p.mlstatic.com/681025-MLA25363466133_022017-Y.jpg
…really ain’t
That can’t feel good…