We Hunted The Mammoth
Jordan Peterson, a tough guy in his own mind, wants to live in a world in which intellectual arguments can be resolved with fisticuffs. Yesterday on Twitter, he suggested that Joe Rogan, on whose podcast he’s made several appearances, should punch out former MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann for calling him a “dipshit.”
Jack Barnes, a volatile American Men’s Rights activist known for his harassment of feminists on Twitter, is now threatening to unleash a new offensive designed “to strike fear in the hearts of feminists.” In a post on Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men bristling with violent language, Barnes declares that
we have our hands on the throat of feminism. This isn’t the time to ease up. This is the time to squeeze harder.
The self-described “Men’s Human Rights” site A Voice for Men is a hate site trying — admittedly not very hard, or convincingly — to pose as a human rights organization. In reality, as I and various other writers have documented in considerable detail, it’s an organizer and amplifier of hatred, directed at feminists and women more generally.
Much of this hatred is directed at specific targets, mostly though not always feminist women who have offended A Voice for Men’s founder Paul Elam. The aim is generally to terrorize feminists into silence.
I’ve written at length about AVFM’s campaigns of vilification and intimidation in the past; for a recent example as well as numerous links to discussions of past examples, see here.
Today I will look at some of the specific tactics that AVFM uses against its targets – providing, in each case, a recent example.
This, in other words, is how AVFM’s Hate Machine functions. [TRIGGER WARNING for abusive language, discussion of abusive tactics]
Well, it took them a little while, but the folks at Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men have finally figured out an angle on the Trayvon Martin case. According to regular AVFM contributor August Løvenskiolds, the whole thing can be blamed on a woman — specifically, Rachel Jeantel, the friend of Trayvon Martin who was on the phone with him just before he was killed.
According to Løvenskiolds, who seems to know more about what happened that night than it is in fact possible for him to know,
During a post-trial interview with Piers Morgan on CNN, Rachel Jeantel, the reluctant phone witness who was talking to Martin just before Martin assaulted Zimmerman, finally revealed that she had warned Martin that Zimmerman might be gay, or even, a gay rapist preparing to approach Martin.
This isn’t news; Jeantel said in her testimony that she told Martin she was afraid the man following him might be a rapist. But Løvenskiolds moves quickly from “sworn testim0ny” to “making shit up.”
Martin freaked out over the idea that Zimmerman might have sexual designs on him or his family, and this seems to have precipitated the attack on Zimmerman – which, of course, would make the attack a violation of Zimmerman’s human rights as a (purportedly) gay man, and make Jeantel the proxy instigator of the attack.
Yes, that’s right, the whole thing was “violence by proxy” instigated by an evil homophobic woman.
Would you like some armchair psychoanalysis to go with your unfounded speculation?
So, Trayvon Martin was killed in the act of gay-bashing (in Jeantel’s and his own minds, anyway). The fury of Martin’s sudden turnabout attack is now explicable (he had been avoiding being followed up to the point of the introduction of the gay rapist idea) and it indicates the degree of Martin’s revulsion that he went from flight to fight mode in so short a time.
And this of course makes it all All About The Menz Rights.
The men’s human rights issues related to a woman (Jeantel) being held blameless for using gay/rape threats to precipitate man-on-man violence ought to be obvious.
It’s always a woman’s fault, isn’t it?
Elsewhere in the post, Løvenskiolds seriously suggests that when a police dispatcher told Zimmerman that “we don’t need you” to follow Martin, that was Super Seekret Man Code for “we actually DO need you to follow him.” No, really.
Such negative suggestions are as clear to savvy men as this: “Honey, you don’t need to buy me roses for Valentine’s Day” – meaning, of course, “if you know what is good for you, I’d better get flowers AND chocolate AND jewelry AND a nice dinner AND…”
The fact that the dispatcher further expected Zimmerman to meet with officers – drafting Zimmerman into the militia, as it were – made it clear to Zimmerman that his continued pursuit of Martin was expected by the police as well.
The societal expectation of militia service by all able-bodied adult males is certainly a men’s human rights issue and an indication of inequality between the genders that needs to be redressed.
MRAs may not be good at much, but they’ve got mental gymnastics down to a science.
EDIT: I added a graf after the first quote from Løvenskiolds clarifying that Jeantel says she did in fact tell Martin that she thought Zimmerman might be a rapist.
Evidently it is, at least according to these Men’s Rights Redditors and the people who upvoted them:
Oh, I know, they were JOKING. Pretty hilarious joke there, fellas!
I’ve got a few more based on the same formula:
How many [insert name of group you don’t like] does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
It only takes one to “accidentally” electrocute themselves doing this routine household chore, if you catch my drift, nudge nudge.
—
Why did the chicken cross the road?
I don’t know but it would be a shame if he didn’t make it all the way across if you know what I mean.
—
Knock knock
Who’s there?
It would be a shame if the person you let in the door were to murder your family, hint hint.
Yeah, those really aren’t jokes, per se, are they?
Thanks to Cloudiah for pointing me to this lovely little Men’s Rights subreddit exchange.
The MRA hissy fit over Facebook continues. Over on A Voice for (Human) Men, our old friend John “The Other” Hembling offers up his take on the whole controversy, which has roused the usually torpid MRAs to “activism,” and somehow manages to be even more overheated and incoherent than even Paul Elam before him — and at times nearly as ponderous as the legendarily ponderous Fidelbogen as well.
Some months back, I made a post in which I referred to the mysterious JohnTheOther by his real name. I didn’t think this was a big deal, since John — whom regular readers know as the number two man at Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men – had previously used his real name, and linked it to his online pseudonym, in various writings of his and on YouTube. But he asked me to remove his name from Man Boobz because, he said, he was being harassed. So, out of courtesy to him, I did.
Now, frankly, JohnTheOther is making me feel like he played me for a sucker, and is making me wonder why I continue to pay him this courtesy.
Feeling nostalgic for any of Man Boobz’ classic trolls? Here’s our old friend Anthony Zarat, now a regular Reddit Men’s Rightser, explaining some things about the ladies of today. Note: In order to understand what he’s saying, you need to know that when MRAs talk about “proxy violence,” they mean women calling the police on a dude, which women of course only do when men are completely innocent, because men are always innocent. (Also, in MRAland all police are men, and White Knights to boot.)
I like that he complains about women being “narcissistic,” then invents his own definition of “character” that applies to his own little obsession.
