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By David Futrelle
In 2010, men’s rights lawyer Roy Dean Hollander wrote an inflammatory piece for the men’s rights hate site A Voice for Men declaring that men might be forced to take up arms to defeat what he saw as the tyranny of feminism.
Several weeks ago, Den Hollander took his own advice, gunning down the son and husband of a female judge he had tangled with in the past; the son died of his wounds. Several days earlier he killed rival men’s rights attorney Marc Angelucci.
If you thought Den Hollander’s murders would have occasioned some soul searching on the part of the folks at AVFM, you would be dead wrong. Site foinder Paul Elam and others associated with the site offered no apoligies for publishing Den Hollander’s screed (or for a later post by Elam effusively praising him as a “real man”); instead they insisted to anyone who would listen that Den Hollander wasn’t a real men’s rights activist at all and had nothing to do with them.
On Tuesday, AVFM published a post by Gary Costanza referring to Den Hollander’s murder of Angelucci which somehow managed to avoid mentioning both his name and his previous connection to the site, referring to him only as a “demented person.”
Down the memory hole he goes.
Den Hollander – who killed himself shortly after his assault on the judge’s family – was not the only “demented person” in AVFM’s past.
You may be familiar with the name Chris Cantwell – he’s perhaps better known as “the Crying Nazi,” infamous for a teary video he put out after hearing that there was a warrant out for his arrest for several counts of assault at the notorious Unite the Right rally in 2017. Before going full Nazi, you see, Cantwell wrote a number of pieces for AVFM on such topics as IQ, the evils of gun control, and feminists “who demonize men and white people.” When, at the time he was writing for AVFM, I criticized his online harassment of some of his many enemies, Elam wrote a post defending Cantwell and advising me to kill myself.
Cantwell, not only a political activist but quite the gun enthusiast, has been a busy boy in the last several years; his rap sheet is too long and complicated to easily summarize here, but he’s served time for assault and currently sits in jail awaiting trial on charges of threats and extortion against a fellow neo-Nazi. Given his love of guns and his utter lack of impulse control, I think it’s kind of a miracle he hasn’t shot anyone yet.
Over the years, Elam has befriended and published several other men’s rights activists who frankly seem as unhinged as Den Hollander and Cantwell; thankfully none of them have acted out in the same way.
In Constanza’s post today, he urges fellow MRAs to “redouble our efforts” in the wake of Angelucci’s murder.
I would suggest that fans of the site do some serious self-reflection first. Is there a reason their side – and their site — attracts so many “demented” individuals? Perhaps this is not simply bad luck? Perhaps it’s because, to paraphrase a famous comedy routine by Mitchell and Webb, they are the baddies?
H/T — to Twitter’s @TakedownMRAs, who inspired this post.
Nagflar,
As a Mexican American I’m more likely to look at whether someone is an Anglo or not before I look at whether they are cis-het or not.
Guys, I’ve internalized incels.
I saw “Rosie the Riveter” and I at first read it as “Roastie the Riveter.”
Sigh.
Aw man, did I miss the return of skimmingway? Damn!
I’ll leave him a question in case he comes back: What are your thoughts on Jesus Christ?
If we’re coming up with questions for Skimmingway, I have a few others:
1. Do you think that there is a “LGBT Agenda”? If so, what do you think it is?
2. Do you think Barack Obama was born in Kenya?
3. What do you think of lobsters?
4. Do you think 9/11 was an inside job?
@AVN
You could read an introduction to get started 🙂
I like the introduction from the Geek Feminism website:
https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Feminism_101
It’s easy to read an interesting and I think you will like it as a way to learn. 🙂
Some of my guys really like it and it’s one I still read because they sometimes quote writers and thinkers I learned about in school.
I hope that helps!
Too many things to respond to, so I’ll just go with the one which mentions me directly:
@Reaktor:
Two blocks away from my apartment, there is a street with several businesses on it, some of which I would go to occasionally. Or rather, had businesses before the coronavirus, but all but one of them is still closed even though my state reopened. Some of them it’s pretty clear that they’re never coming back – the tattoo parlor and the Mexican restaurant have signs up saying as much, and some of the others are just completely empty. The one business still running? A micro-distillery. I haven’t been all over the rest of the town due to, you know, the until-recent lockdown, but so far it seems that what’s still around (not counting government-run things like libraries and post offices) are mainly grocery stores, fast-food places, hardware stores, and about half of the clothing stores. And, okay, there are a few seemingly random things like the stationary store and the sex toy shop are doing okay (and I do have a pretty good idea as to why the latter, ditto to the distillery), but everything else, nope.
That’s not going to get replaced quickly even under normal conditions, and these aren’t normal conditions. On top of that, there is serious discussion going on about replacing the former zinc processing plant with an Amazon distribution warehouse (though that wouldn’t be for at least a few years) which would help a lot in the short term provided that Amazon hasn’t figured out how to make themselves mostly automated by then (probably won’t, but they’re working on that, it’s not like that should be news to anyone here, but apparently it is). In the long run, I’m not sure that contributing to the rise of real-world equivalents of Omni Consumer Products to be a good idea. (Yes, I am aware that OCP is, to some extent, a dystopian parody, or at least it was in the 1980s version of Robocop, as I haven’t seen the remake. That doesn’t mean that its present-day real-world equivalents would necessarily be a good idea.)
While it’s mostly anecdotes and hearsay, I’ve heard of similar problems in other towns, including some in different states. But maybe big cities won’t be affected as much? That doesn’t mean that they’re not affected at all, and it might betray a sort of big city-privilege (or even small-city chauvinism) if there’s a widespread attitude that things can recover quickly in most places and the places where it can’t do so don’t matter.
Also, the “empty luxury condo” phenomenon isn’t really a small-city thing, it’s mostly happening in and around larger cities, though not every large city is experiencing it yet. It may not even really be a thing in Non-Russian Europe and some other places, since everything I hear about is in the United States, Russia, China, and the United Arab Emirates. It’s also the sort of thing which tends not to feel like it matters unless you’re one of the very small number people who it has affected directly – but it exists mostly due to the increasing concentration of wealth, and it can be used as a tool to help dodge financial accountability – so if nothing else, it’s both a symptom of economic structural problems and an unnecessary waste of land.
@AVN
Words matter. But they matter because they create a culture where it’s seen ok to hurt way way more than our feelings. I’m not saying feelings aren’t important and I think respect is critical (and anyone who knows me from even my posts here knows I don’t just value it but demand it, as is my right.) But A Voice for Men and people like that and incels don’t just say things that hurt our feelings but create and build a culture where women’s lives are in danger pretty much just for existing. I get bothered and harassed by creepy guys pretty much just for existing and I never know when one of them is seconds away from wanting to try to hurt me. He wouldn’t succeed but hundreds of millions of women in our country live with that threat every day. Go listen to AOC’s speech in Congress recently because she is brilliant about explaining how words against us just aren’t mean words but part of a way of life that endangers *women’s* lives automatically just for existing.
If you are sincere then please please understand this: a man who has feminist ideas especially if he is a cishet man can do a lot more good talking about his feminist beliefs *to other cishet men* than by talking to women. When it comes to women a cishet man can just *listen* and *hear*. If you read more about various feminist ideas you will probably see that.
I hope you read and think! I think you will find the Feminism 101 page helpful. 🙂
@Avn
I didn’t see your comment before, it must have just come through. Welcome, I’m glad to hear you have changed and that you’d like to learn about feminism. Stacey has already given you a good starting place, and I’m sure that some others will bring some other resources. There are also some sites linked in the sidebar of this blog that may help. If you have any (good faith) questions about feminism or intersectionality, I and other commenters are happy to answer.
@Avn
Feminism is not a monolith, but feminists generally don’t keep their views a secret? If you want answers, you just have to go look for them. At a last resort, if all else fails, ask? IDK why there’s any reason for you to be confused about any aspect of feminism, as resources are there for you if you really want to know.
In a way I think I can understand the “weird amalgam of entitlement and learned helplessness” even though I agree with the criticisms. I apparently come from a rich background on at least one side of my family. This has led to some privileges like getting diagnosed early and having at least initially an environment that supported my learning. But ultimately it also meant hard-headed Protestant work ethic attitudes and seeing me as a “gifted child” and I know a lot of other people can guess how all that ended up once that illusion fell apart. I built up a certain view of how the world works from all that, and the years since have been an endless cycle of discovering how much the world does not work that way. Surely the ones who run society at least care enough to ensure that everybody can do X? Turns out, no, they don’t give a shit at all. The hole of apathy just keeps on going.
The thing is, it’s even worse for other people who are never even subjected to the illusion in the first place; that’s how little society cares about them. That doesn’t mean my own problems are trivial. It’s just a lot of times I look at my situation and think I’m nearly totally screwed and all the choices are bad. But then I realize that other people are also nearly totally screwed, often to a similar level, often even in similar ways, and all the choices are still bad but they make the best of it because they’re just trying to survive. (And then they’re criticized by society for engaging in risky behaviour.)
Thanks for your reply, Snowberry. I apologize for being rude. I live in a small city in South America and my situation here is different. Currently most stores are open, though with limits to how many people can enter at a time, how long they can stay open and, of course, masks are required. Thankfully our anti-mask movement is relatively small and it’s rare for places to defy or refuse to enforce the orders like some in the USA do. Public places like schools and cinemas will stay closed for a while, though.
@ Snowberry
Here in the UK (still non-Russian Europe, at least the Covid-19 seems to be keeping the ‘Novichok tourists’ away) the empty luxury apartments are a thing. It’s so noticeable it has a name, ‘buy to leave.’
On a lighter note automated commercial delivery systems might need a lot more work before they ever become viable:
https://bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-53678376
Hello, all. Been on vacation for the last week, didn’t get anywhere near as much done as I wanted, but just to catch up on this thread (let’s see if this all actually gets posted):
@skimmingway:
Yeah, and I have been published. Two short stories, working on cleaning up a novel currently. And that isn’t even my day job.
Indeed, given that it’s a cyberpunk novel, the people wanting to tear down capitalism and break the current system are actually the protagonists.
@Pavlovs House
Yeah, speaking as someone with a Master’s degree in Engineering, and who also knows several SCAdians with similar qualifications… it’s like, no? We have an entire field of study based on how to efficiently construct fortifications, and a lot of history in studying how that knowledge was obtained.
(I seem to recall a few years ago we finally figured out the ‘trick’ to some of the Roman concrete that was still around: they’d managed to find a version of concrete that continued to ‘cure’ while in salt water. It’s actually less useful than most modern concrete unless you’re trying to build pilings to support an oceanic pier, but from a historical standpoint it was still interesting to figure out what they were doing two thousand years ago.)
@Naglfar:
Wouldn’t surprise me, sovereign citizens (or ‘freemen on the land’ to use the more British term) are kind of the peak of the ‘I’m smarter than all of you sheeple’ kind of thinking.
@Snowberry:
I recall hearing once that Marie-Antoinette was so convinced of the wonders of ‘the bucolic life of the peasant’ that when she went on a carriage tour, royal servants would run ahead of the tour to clean up people along the way. She wasn’t mean, she was just a sheltered, privileged brat who had absolutely no concept of what it ever meant to actually be in want of something.
Not to mention that, really, one of the biggest flaws in monarchy is the fact that even if any given king may have actually had the best in mind for his people, there’s no way to guarantee that his descendants will. See also, what happened to Rome after the Republic became the Empire, and many Emporers descended into debauchery.
Democracy has its flaws, yes, but one thing it has over Monarchy is that it limits the amount of time any one person has to screw things up.
@Redsilkphoenix:
Well, Canada is technically a constitutional monarchy. As Snowberry says, oftenthat means that the monarch has mostly emergency powers and powers to ensure the continuance of government during other turnovers (unlike the U.S. where every election happens at once and you have this stupidly long period where the people in charge may know they won’t be soon). Most of the actual running of things is done at the democratically-elected level. And really, most of the day-to-day stuff is done at the bureaucratic level.
@Big Titty Demon, Naglfar:
For me, the biggest advantage to IDEs over straight text editors like VIM (which I use a lot) is the ability to go ‘find me all references to this function in the project, no matter what file they’re in’, especially with large projects. Now, that said, there are ways to do that with Vim (ctags is the classic way) but it requires a lot more setup and maintenance.
And yeah, I like Python myself, but as far as I’m concerned Python is best for ‘I need to hack together a wrapper for these libraries that does this specific task that I may or may not never need again’. It’s great for building test tools to use on other things because you can tweak it easily… it would not be my first choice for serious numerical analysis.
Then again, I used to work with people who still did their serious numerical analysis in Fortran, because that’s what all their specialized libraries were written in.
@Ohlmann, Catalpa:
Yes, I remember people talking about the $1000/month rents in Toronto making life difficult for students at the University of Toronto (which is pretty much downtown)… over twenty years ago. Just looking up ‘average rent in Toronto’ gives me things like this:
https://www.blogto.com/real-estate-toronto/2020/06/average-rent-prices-continue-fall-toronto-amid-pandemic/
@Naglfar:
Yeah, I remember hearing about Shatner defending Autism Speaks. I first heard about it on Respectful Insolence, where Orac was commenting on finding himself in an argument with Shatner via Twitter.
https://respectfulinsolence.com/2017/04/06/its-a-strange-world-after-all-orac-vs-the-shat-and-fake-news-over-autism-speaks/
@Mrs Obed Marsh
“Aw man, did I miss the return of skimmingway? Damn!
I’ll leave him a question in case he comes back: What are your thoughts on Jesus Christ?”
My feelings about Jesus Christ are a little too complex and conflicted to express here; we are not always in full agreement, though sometimes I find myself truly believing that he is, in fact, the son of God – so much of what I see today appears to have been foretold in the Book of Revelations and other important biblical documents, almost to the point that it can’t be simple coincidence.
Joseph de Maistre claimed that, wherever one found an altar, they would also find civilization. I am much in agreement with this, no matter my individual feelings regarding Jesus Christ; the church has been, and, quite possibly, might continue to be a useful institution for the proper cultural instruction of the masses. Should a king exist, I should hope that he would possess proper religious instruction, and I can think of no greater institution than the Catholic church to provide him with such. Even if the king does not believe in any of the church’s doctrines himself, it is important that he possess proper knowledge of them, and give nobody reason to suspect that he is an infidel.
@Naglfart
“If we’re coming up with questions for Skimmingway, I have a few others:
1. Do you think that there is a “LGBT Agenda”? If so, what do you think it is?
2. Do you think Barack Obama was born in Kenya?
3. What do you think of lobsters?
4. Do you think 9/11 was an inside job?”
1. Almost certainly. To turn woman against man, and man against family, etc etc. Though at heart, I would claim to be an individualist of sorts, and I would go so far as to say that family bonds are almost too primitive to be celebrated by any civilized society, I understand fully that, the nuclear family is of great importance to the continued cultural excellence of the West, and the decay of this institution will, no doubt, lead to further decadence in our other institutions, whether it be art, education, politics, or so forth. True, to an extent, these latter institutions have been martialed in order to act as termites towards the former, such that the decay of the former only strengthens the powers of the latter, etc., but I believe that the homosexualist agenda does play an important role in all of this. It promotes a dangerous form of unhealthy individualism, and individualism of the wrong sort, even; John Maynard Keynes was a homosexual, and he promoted profligate policies of virtually limitless government spending, unbacked by any kind of stable commodity such as gold, mind you, and it is my contention that such unstable and unsustainable fiscal deracination will have the effect of encouraging the further expansion and encroachment of statist nannying into our lives before ultimately bankrupting our governments. No doubt, this was all because he sired no children, causing him to lack the proper time preferences necessary to act as an intellectual and political steward to future generations (“…in the long run, we are all dead.”)
2. It would not surprise me to learn that he was, but ultimately, this is useless speculation which misses the mark – people as far left as him should never have been able to become president in the first place! THAT is what is truly worrying; I would A THOUSAND times prefer someone who is less radical, less likely to bend to progressive pressures, and born in some other country (Eastern Europe, perhaps?) than have a born-American who holds and enacts such dangerous policies as Barrack Obama.
3. They are quite tasty, but what little you get of them is not justified by the price. I was told that, at one time, such a food item was considered a poor man’s cuisine; had I been born at such a time, I would no doubt have the capacity to eat them to my heart’s content. Though I am being partly facetious in saying so, this is yet another sign of the world’s decline.
4. It would not surprise me to learn that it was. I am presently unable to give full expression to my most accurate cogitations regarding the issue, however, due in no small part to the overly-stringent policies on this website. No doubt, after having branded me a “racist,” as well as a “fascist,” a “Nazi,” and other such unsavory things, you are looking to cover up that final spot labelled “antisemite” on your bingo card; I will deprive you of the pleasure of doing so, by admitting that I really can’t say for certain whether such people as “the Zionists” were really responsible for it in any way. So don’t go lighting THAT fire and dancing around it.
@Snowberry : it’s completely a thing in Paris, Milan, and probably any pretty european city. Not a thing AFAIK in actually small french cities. (I specifically refer to Besançon and Dole for thoses who ask “how small”)
The disapperance of small shop because of the corona isn’t a thing in France as far as I can see. (I live in the suburbs, where thoses shops are already not that common and they don’t seem to particulary die out more than before). Small shop dying out is however an enduring concern in pretty much all french cities, little by little.
Part of what die are shops that add relatively little value. For example, book shops and video game shops, I still dutifully support, but I don’t need their advice for choosing my book/game because of the internet, so they add little compared to buying directly to the editor.
For some other, it’s quite litteraly Amazon and the like trying to undercut them. Which is why in France, and probably in all of Europe, selling at a loss is forbidden
@Jenora : that being said, if there is decent internet only in the 1300$+ area then you have massive infrastructure problem. I can see having fiber only in Toronto and similar city, but ADSL don’t require *that* much of investment to bring it to mid to small cities no ?
I also continue to think there is something fishy if Toronto have litteraly twice the rent of Paris for students. Maybe Canadians are massively better paid than french, or there is something that skew the comparison massively. I mean, a recurring problem in Paris is how low wage jobs cannot inhabit anywhere near Paris, because paying half your pay for rent isn’t survivable. Are every convenience store manned by robots or what ?
ALERT ALERT THE TROLL IS BACK ALERT ALERT
@Ohlmann:
ADSL only typically goes up to a couple of megabits per second, nowhere near enough to stream video decently. Audio, perhaps.
@skummingway:
You are aware that, according to every word about him in the Gospels, Christ was a flaming socialist sandal-wearing longhair hippie whose major acts included doling out universal healthcare, attacking bankers, and promoting greater welfare for the poor and downtrodden, right? If he’d returned smack in the middle of the 60s, attended Woodstock, gave a bunch of political commentary, and departed again, nobody would have batted an eye as he’d have blended right in. The closest major American political figure in outlook now is Bernie Sanders; and the closest major American political figure to the Antichrist is Donald Trump. Heck, he even fiddled while the country whose safekeeping he was charged with burned:
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-shares-twitter-meme-fiddling-critics-compare-nero/story?id=69488386
As for the “gay agenda”, it is actually quite straightforward: cause LGBTQIPA+ individuals to be treated “just like everybody else” instead of stigmatized, and everyone to have the freedom to be who they wish to be in regard to sexuality and gender. Oooh, how sinister!
@Surplus of Stupidity, Vast Observer of Its Own Navel
Do not trouble me; I’m looking to do battle with whales, not goldfish.
Skimmingway, you know if you just make insults it shows that really you dont have any argument or understanding? All you do is show everyone that you dont know. You couldn’t even battle krill.
@valentin : he could fight his shadow and lose. The plank length was created in a failed attempt of finding what measure of opponent skimmingway could be well matched against.
On other news, @david, I would support the ban of Skimmingway. In particular, I start seeing too mean an insult to people that don’t merit it.
@ skimmingway
It’s “Book of Revelation”; singular!
Sorry, but that’s one of my bugbears, like when people say Thomas a Becket or Forensic Evidence.
@Ohlmann
“I start seeing too mean an insult to people that don’t merit it.”
You probably also see visions of Twinkies copulating with Swiss-Rolls, but just seeing something doesn’t make it so.
@Valentin
And you couldn’t even battle windmills.
But Alan, he sounds so good with the à 🙁
(idle curiosity: did the à just get added arbitrarily, at some time post mortem, or was there a reason for it do you know?)
I am beginning to suspect skimmingway is a child/teenager
@ jenora
Yeah; now we just need that volcano to crack off again and we can all grab a shovel.
Ah yes; you do still encounter them occasionally. The movement seems to have died down a bit though, now that people have realised using the arguments is the best way to convert a traffic fine into a prison sentence.
The Lord Chancellor’s Department* has issued guidance to judges and magistrates based on this rather brilliant analysis.
http://www.canlii.ca/en/ab/abqb/doc/2012/2012abqb571/2012abqb571.html
(*We’re supposed to call it the ministry of justice now; but that sounds a bit Orwellian)
Does someone know what either a twinkie or swiss roll are ? I suspect Skim’ forget not everyone is american. Not sure if he get that other people aren’t him at all TBH.
@Valentin : in mind, probably. That being said, 30+ years old who have all the maturity and wits of a fifteen year old who just learned that fuck is a word are sadly common. In particular, in videogames the archetype of the rude teenager is often actually an adult.