We Hunted The Mammoth
How often has this happened to you? You’re reading a thoughtful blog post or comment from a Men’s Rights Activist and you find yourself thinking:
“Gosh! This post or comment on how women are a bunch of malevolent parasites/men are the real slaves if you think about it/women were never oppressed because they could just get maids to clean the house is so witty and wise. I only wish it were 50 times longer, and that I had to pay money to read it!”
Well, I’ve got good news for you: Now you can!
Worlds are colliding: Roosh Valizadeh, the reactionary, woman-hating pick-up guru, is starting a #GamerGate inspired game site, just as #GamerGate itself is descending into a morass of mutual recriminations and generalized douchebaggery.
Reaxxion – the title presumably a reference to Roosh’s neo-reactionary political views – doesn’t seem to have officially launched yet, but it is up, and looking a bit threadbare at the moment, with only a handful of articles posted yet. Billed as “a safe space for gamers who support #gamergate,” the site is an obvious attempt to cash in on #GamerGate anger. Roosh’s timing is a little less than perfect; he’s jumping aboard this money train as it seems to be derailing.
AN OPEN LETTER TO DAVIS AURINI AND JORDAN OWEN UPON THE RELEASE OF THEIR FIRST SARKEESIAN EFFECT TEASER
Hey guys, big fan here.
Just watched your Sarkeesian Effect teaser video. An outstanding job! Even though this is, I know, a rough and unfinished trailer using raw footage from the first couple of days of shooting, it’s clear that this film – this epic journey into journalism, if I might coin a phrase here (you can totally use it!) – will more than live up to your earlier work.
Yesterday, A Voice for Men published an article so extreme, so hateful, so beyond the pale, that even Paul Elam, the site’s founder, was taken aback by it. Elam, who said he hadn’t read the article before other editors on the site posted it, claimed in a comment that when he finally did read it, it made him literally sick to his stomach.
Today, he took the extraordinary step – for AVFM – of taking down the article and offering an apology for publishing a piece so “counter to every aspect of our mission and values.” (It’s still up, for the time being, in Google cache; the original can also be found here.)
So what did this terrible, terrible article say? Brace yourself.
On Friday, expat woman-hating woman-chaser Roosh Valizadeh put up a post on his Return of Kings blog with the sensationalized headline “Did Anita Sarkeesian Commit Felony Wire Fraud?”
Roosh breathlessly “reported” that
Heh. I’m on my annual semi-vacation this week, and was planning on keeping my postings here fairly light. But the news waits for no one. And by “news” I mean the daily parade of ridiculousness coming from the Men’s “Human Rights” camp. So here’s a quick report on the latest bit of high irony involving A Voice for Men.
Well, I was wrong. I’ve often noted that the Men’s Rights movement in general, and A Voice for Men in particular, doesn’t actually provide any real help for any real men. Sure, as far as I can tell, precisely zero of the hundreds of thousands of dollars A Voice for Men has raised from donors over the years has gone into providing actual services for men — say, funding a hotline for troubled men or some other practical program that doesn’t primarily involve yelling at women online. But never let it be said that none of this money gods to help men.
Because, it turns out, that money has been going to help men. Or at least that subset of men that consists of one Paul Elam of Houston Texas.
After being pressed for details about A Voice for Men’s finances by anonymous commenters on Reddit, a certain Twitterer named @DavidFutrelle and a journalist from MSNBC, Elam has finally fessed up and admitted that all the money donated to his website goes directly to him. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Elam had to say in a post from yesterday:
A Voice for Men’s grandly titled First International Conference on Men’s Issues wound down a week ago. But the drama continues.
Today, in a post on AVFM, maximum leader Paul Elam set forth a series of accusations against the Doubletree Fort Shelby Hotel (where the conference was originally going to be held); against an unnamed security contracting company in Houston; and even against some hypothetical “privileged little college girls” who might have had the conference booted from the Doubletree by simply making a couple of irate phone calls, because, at least in Elam’s imagination, “privileged little college girls” have that power.
But the bulk of Elam’s complaints lie with the Doubletree, as the typically understated title of his post makes clear:
UPDATE: D’oh! It looks like this Craigslist ad is a fake. A very similar “gentleman” posted a very similar Craigslist Personal a little less than a year ago, as this Huffington Post story at the time reported. That gentleman claimed to be living in California, not Canada. So unless the fellow who wrote this ad just moved to Edmonton, it looks like a big ol FAKE.
But it’s still pretty funny.
Hey ladies! Are you a “worthy” woman between the ages of 18-27? Do you like men who think most women, including possibly you, are terrible? Are you looking for a long-winded, judgmental jackass who is definitely older than you but who won’t specify his age, what kind of music he likes, or whether or not he likes dogs until after you’ve met? Do you enjoy reading giant walls of text on the internet that randomly erupt in ALL CAPS and inappropriate “quotation” marks?
Oh, and do you live in Alberta, Canada?
Well, then, you’re in luck, because I have found the man for you! Correction: the GENTLEman for you. Nestled away in the men seeking women section of Craigslist, Edmonton, there’s a self-described
very nice, mature , “gentleman.” with a higher college degree and education. I have my own house (not apartment), car, motorcycle, income, etc. I am of European descent (Spanish/Austrian). A professional man with a GOOD BACKGROUND. Better than 99% of what you will find, GUARANTEE #1.
And all you have to do to in order to meet this fine fellow is to read through his 3500 word, 28-question FAQ to make sure you don’t disagree with him about anything, from the playing of video games (bad) to the proper age difference between men and women in relationships (“Generally speaking the MAN should be OLDER than the woman because females mature or age faster than males (both physically and mentally). This is a scientific fact.”)
Here are some of the things Paul Elam of A Voice for Mens has said in the past that the $80,000 plus in donations his site aims to take in every year go to:
Dedicated servers, image royalties, legal fees, internet radio premiums, various kinds of computer and media hardware — and now traveling to different locations, like Toronto, in order to do what has been in the plans all along.
Here are a few things Elam has not said the donations have been going to:
Buying him sandwiches. Paying for the down payment on a condo. Paying his cable bill. Paying for DVD rentals. Buying tasteful framed art for the walls and tchotchkes for the end tables. Buying him suits for his big important media interviews.
Well, now he’s fessed up — sort of.
After a bit of a kerfuffle about financial transparency in his site’s comments section, Elam has finally admitted what a lot of us have been assuming but that he’s been loath to admit: that he’s been living off of his supporters’ donations — and a generous girlfriend. As he explained in a post yesterday:
Presented, without comment — ok, besides this comment, and the comment in the title of the post — is this headline from the Men’s Rights subreddit:
Thanks once again to AgainstMensRights for finding this one.
Also, it’s BRITNEY. Not Brittany. Britney. One T, followed by NEY. B-R-I-T-N-E-Y. It’s not hard to remember.
