One of the benefits of running a cult – or so I have heard – is the ability to define reality for your cult followers. The principals at the cultish A Voice for Men do this all the time – pretending, for example, that former AVFM Number Two John Hembling had once faced off against a mob of 20-30 angry feminists brandishing boxcutters when his own video of the event showed him conversing with a handful of peaceful activists. And who can forget their attempts to cast their embarrassingly poorly attended rally on Toronto as a “huge success?”
However successful they are at redefining reality for their cult followers, cult leaders encounter problems when they try to do the same thing for those outside of their sphere of influence.
Take AVFM maximum leader Paul Elam’s continual attempts to recast some of the vilest things he’s written as “satire,” an explanation that only seems to fly amongst MRAs with a large capacity for the willing suspension of disbelief.
Well, now AVFM’s comically inept PR maven Janet “JudgyBitch” Bloomfield has taken on the project of trying to retroactively redefine Elam’s most despicable writings as satire.
Roy Den Hollander: Are we lawyer or are we dancer?
The other day I suggested that perhaps it was unfair to the Men’s Rights movement to allow them to handle their own public relations, given how terrible they are at it. Today I wonder if the same principle might also apply to MRAs trying to handle their own lawyering.
A case in point: the lawsuit that antifeminist lawyer, “Ladies Night” hater and hip-hop dance enthusiat Roy Den Hollander has just brought against Australian journalist Tory Shepherd, who wrote about the involvement of Den Hollander and others with links to “men’s rights extremists” in a proposed set of “male studies” courses at the University of South Australia.
It’s still not clear to me if these courses had ever been formally approved – the university says they weren’t – but Den Hollander thinks that Shepherd and another Australian reporter got them cancelled by writing about them. And so he figures that they should compensate him for losing him his teaching gig.
You may vaguely remember all of this. A Voice for Men, heavily involved in the courses, famously denounced Shepherd as a “whore” shortly after AVFM’s Paul Elam indignantly called her a liar for suggesting that A Voice for Men regularly calls women whores. (Which of course it does; Elam himself used the word “whore” 28 times in a single post about Skepchick’s Rebecca Watson.)
Anyhoo, so Den Hollander, acting as his own lawyer, has served Shepherd with the lawsuit. And it’s a doozy of a document, at least going by the excerpts Shepherd posted in a column Wednesday.
Somehow we doubt that this lawsuit is going to enhance Den Hollander’s reputation as a fair-minded analyst of gender relations.
Here are some of the best bits, as presented by Shepherd in her column as “some lessons from Mr Den Hollander, who will not be paid to give lessons at UniSA.”
Lesson 1: How to censor a journalist by accusing them of censorship.
“Two modern-day, book-burning, Bacchae reporters from down-under authored and published false and misleading information concerning Plaintiff (Den Hollander) with the intent and result of harming his economic interests and interfering with a prospective economic advantage by causing the University of SA to incinerate the section of a proposed male studies course that Plaintiff would have taught,” he writes. But wait.
Lesson 2: How to personally attack a journalist by accusing them of personal attacks.
“The two reporters, Tory Shepherd, AKA “Tory the Torch” for The Advertiser and Amy McNeilage, AKA “Amy McNeuter” for The Sydney Morning Herald, used their power as reporters to do what weak-minded ideologues have done throughout history — employ personal attacks to prevent the spread of knowledge and ideas that they disagreed with.”
Lesson 3: How to prove you are not an extremist by sounding like an extremist.
“If these two feminist book-burners had not jumped on their broomsticks and scared the bejesus out of the administrators of the University of SA, students there would have had an opportunity to acquire information and consider views not available anywhere else in higher education.”
Yeah, I’m sure that sort of thing is going to go over great in court.
Elsewhere in his lawsuit, Den Hollander denounces “yellow, female-dog-in-heat reporting,” takes a swipe at “girlie-guys,” and offers this intriguing take on Australian military history:
Thank goodness for Australians that Tory was not around for Australia’s battle against the Japanese. Her anti-gun advocacy for men might have even resulted in her and Amy ending up as Japanese “comfort girls.”
The case does at least promise to be highly entertaining, so I guess we have to give Den Hollander credit for that.
You all got the memo about #EndFathersDay fiasco, right – the phony “feminist” hashtag, seeded and spread by 4chan trolls, that aroused so much consternation on Twitter the other day, and that took in so many who’re already given to thinking the worst about feminism?
It would be nice if we could just dismiss this whole thing as trolls being trolls – no harm, no foul. But there’s a bit more to it than that.
For one thing, the troll campaign worked. At least on some people: While feminist writers quickly rushed in to point out that the whole thing was an antifeminist hoax, more than a few in the right-wing media were taken in utterly.
Men in Canadian elevators are sometimes also used as chairs.
Does anyone here understand string theory and dark matter and all that physics crap? Because I am seriously beginning to wonder if Men’s Rights Activists literally live in an alternate universe that only partially intersects with our own.
In the universe I live in, Canada is a lovely and somewhat uncannily polite country to the north, the home of Rush and Kate Beaton and, I’m pretty sure, a lot of bears. To MRAs it is a land under the bootheel of a radical feminist gynarchy in which men cower in elevators because they are deathly afraid of being accused of sexual harassment.
No, really.
I was skimming through an old interview with good old Erin Pizzey, A Voice for Men’s pet domestic violence expert, probably because she’s the only one who thinks jokes about eating “battered women” — you know, like batter fried chicken — are hilarious.
In the interview, she was telling Dean “Long Tie” Esmay about a speaking tour she’d made in Canada — a place she describes as “one of the worst countries in the world.” No, really. Here’s what she had to say about her harrowing ordeal:
I did a six week tour, with Senator Anne Cools, all across Canada. And there were some wonderful … uh, men’s groups, just struggling to keep going. And as we traveled and talked to men’s groups, we realized how terribly dangerous it is because it’s almost as though the entire government and the judiciary–the same people–had been infiltrated by very radical feminists out to get men. And I talked to people all the way across Canada. You know my mother was Canadian, and I’m half Canadian, and it hurt actually. See I was a child in Toronto, and my feeling as we went through is real fear. I remember I was working with Anne in the Senate and I walked in to the lift, and this man who was in the lift with me was cowering over in the corner. And I came out and I said to Anne, “What on earth was that about?” And she said, “Men are frightened. They just don’t know when they’re going to be told they’re sexually harassing somebody.”
I’ve highlighted several of the passages which I think may have entered our universe from the Bizarro Men’s Rights multidimensional wormhole of misandry.
But, seriously, what planet does this woman live on? Does she actually think something like this really happened? Was there really a man in an elevator with her who was literally cowering in the corner because he thought she would accuse him of some sort of sex crime? Was there a man there at all? Was there even an elevator? Is Canada a real country? THEN WHO WAS PHONE?
A Voice for Men’s media blitz continues apace. On Sunday, fresh on the heels of his colleague Robert O’Hara’s often cringeworthy Al Jazeera interview, AVFM “managing editor” Dean Esmay appeared on the unfortunately named “Let it Rip,” a news show on the local Fox affiliate in Detroit, to discuss that upcoming “Men’s Issues” conference we’ve been hearing so much about.
The excitable Esmay, wearing a tie at least a foot longer than necessary and facing off against a far more polished Heather Dillaway, a feminist sociologist from Wayne State University, did not exactly dispel the notion that the Men’s Rights movement isn’t ready for its close up just yet.
Esmay robotically rattled off an assortment of the sort of phony “factoids” that go over well only in the echo chambers of the Men’s Rights movement, and responded to questions not with answers but with rapidly regurgitated talking points — at one point declaring, to the bemusement of Prof. Dillaway and the rest, that
Relationships with women: “Complicated and oftentimes dangerous.”
Men’s Rights Activists continue to make strategic use of the media attention they’ve gained as a result of the Elliot Rodger killings. Yesterday, Al Jazeera America ran an interview with A Voice for Men’s “US News Director” Robert O’Hara in which he touched upon numerous important Men’s Rights issues, like the fact that he doesn’t hate women because his mother is one, and how it was totally an amazing publicity coup for AVFM to be singled out as a misogynistic hate site by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Let’s look at some highlights from his Q and A. (The block quotes are direct quotes from the man, the legend, himself.)
Unlike women, men have REAL issues to deal with. Like giant otters.
Anyone who reads the Men’s Rights subreddit on a regular basis knows that when you see the username DavidByron2 you are in for a treat. Well, a “treat” in the sense that discovering a flaming bag of dog poop on your doorstop is a “treat.” Like many Men’s Rightsers, he’s both smug and ignorant, a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
But somehow he manages to be more than just another insufferable mansplaining rage-baby who spends all of his spare time ranting about a subject — feminism — he knows less than nothing about. No, there’s a kind of daft genius to his comments; I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.
And so I thought I’d wind up this week with a small collection of the best –that is, worst — comments he left in the Men’s Rights subreddit this week. In choosing the top 5, I have confined myself mostly to those that got more upvotes than downvotes, because, seriously, the thought that there are actual human beings out there upvoting this crap is almost as amazing as the fact that there’s an actual human being posting it. And thinking himself quite clever and righteous for doing so.
So, hoping to find out any more information I could about those threats the A Voice for Men gang has apparently been getting lately, I forced myself to listen to 45 minutes worth of a regular AVFM YouTube show with the highly ironic name Intelligence Report. The topic of the show was ostensibly the “Death Threats in Detroit.” But somehow, AVFM’s Paul Elam, Dean Esmay and Tara Palmatier managed to reveal much less about this subject than they did about their own obsessions and insecurities.
At one point in their rambling conversation they began talking about how unfair it was that the Southern Poverty Law Center had profiled the AVFM gang as a bunch of woman-haters, when really the SPLC should be putting mean feminists on their Hatewatch list instead. And somehow this segued into a discussion of gendered slurs against women, and why it was just fine to use them, so long as you didn’t use them to refer to every single woman on planet earth.
And yes, I’ve saved a sound clip of this edifying discussion for you. You’re welcome!
Oh, just a little FYI, when Pauly says they never ever ever ever use the words “cunt” or “bitch” to describe women as a group — as if using those words is totally fine otherwise — he’s lying. At least when it comes to “cunt.”
feminism, consumer products, psychology, media, advertising, politics and social custom [have] all merged into one Great Big Bitch Machine; [and] the modern female psyche is nothing more than a product of that machine
But technically he’s not calling all women bitches there. Just saying that “modern female psyche” is the product of a “Great Big Bitch Machine.”
Adjusted for inflation, those 5 cent fears are now worth $25,000
Is A Voice for Men using phony “death threats” allegedly directed at those planning to attend its upcoming “Men’s Issues” conference in Detroit, as well as upon employees and guests of the hotel where it’s scheduled to be held, as an excuse to smear feminists and raise a quick $25,000 in donations from readers and possibly even from a handful of gullible feminists?
As incredible as that sounds, that’s what some people I respect are saying. Despite AVFM’s history of lying about alleged feminist threats – you may recall John Hembling’s infamous confrontation with an imaginary mob of 20-30 feminists brandishing boxcutters – I’m not willing to go that far.
But there’s a lot about the story that makes no sense, and some big questions that need convincing answers.
1) The Doubletree Fort Shelby hotel has not confirmed that the letter Paul Elam posted on his site several days ago, and which he has now removed, actually came from them. The letter is, so far, the only evidence that there were any threats.
Hotel management needs to confirm whether or not they sent this letter to Elam.
2) Both the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press spoke to Detroit Police spokesman Adam Madera, who told them that the police had not received any reports of death threats from the hotel. He told both papers that hotel staff had asked about hiring off-duty officers for security but hadn’t specified why.
Hotel management needs to confirm either that 1) they got death threats and didn’t report them or 2) that they got no such threats. They should also confirm whether their calls about off-duty police officers were related to the “Men’s Issues” conference.
There are a few other clues that support the “hoax” theory, though they’re far from definitive:
Several people who have allegedly contacted the hotel to ask about the threat say that the managers they spoke to knew nothing about the threats. Even if these reports are true, this may not be significant; managers may not have been told about threats related to a conference many weeks off.
The Detroit News also spoke to the owner of the hotel, and he said he was unaware of any threats. That may not be significant either; he may simply be out of the loop.
Essentially, we’re waiting for the Doubletree Fort Shelby management to answer these questions. If you look at the news coverage so far you’ll notice that the hotel staffers who can answer these questions don’t seem to be answering their phones or returning calls. I left a message for them today as well. No reply yet.
The other bits of evidence we’re waiting for? Well, the letter Elam claims he got from hotel management says that he and the other conference organizers need to send the hotel proof that they’ve hired the required number of Detroit police officers to handle security, as well as proof that they have also paid for at least $2 million in liability insurance. They have to have this done by the 6th.
In light of all the questions still swirling around, I think people are going to want to see this proof too.
It may be that the hotel comes forward and confirms that the letter was real, that the threats were real, and that indeed A Voice for Men does have to shell out $25,000 for extra security. It may even be the case that it was a feminist or a group of feminists making the threats. But we don’t know. And right now the people who do know are either not talking — or they have pretty much no credibility. Let’s hope the silence ends soon, because there’s no way the not-so-good folks at AVFM are suddenly going to turn credible overnight.
EDIT: I toned down some of the language, which I think was detracting from my main points, and added a new final paragraph.
EDIT 2: Removed some speculation. We’ll know some of the answers soon enough; no need to speculate.
UPDATE: DOUBLETREE STATEMENT
So I’ve heard back from Atiya Frederick, the PR Manager for Embassy Suites Hotels & DoubleTree, and she’s made clear that the hotel won’t be answering specific questions about any of this just yet. Here’s what she sent me.
At this time we are confining our comments on this matter to the below statement …
Hilton Worldwide strives to operate meeting places for people from all walks of life, regardless of beliefs, race, color, national origin, religion or sexual orientation. The views of our guests do not reflect the sentiment of Hilton Worldwide. As places of public accommodation, our hotels do not discriminate against any individual or group. Our goal is to provide quality accommodations and a pleasant environment for our guests, employees and members of our community . We would like to emphasize that we strive to be an inclusive company and regret if this policy has unintentionally offended any individual or organization.
This statement seems to be their standard response when they host a conference by a controversial group.
So about a week ago, someone put a petition up on Whitehouse.gov asking the president to classify the Men’s Rights Movement as a terrorist group. The petition, posted in the immediate aftermath of Elliot Rodger ‘s killing spree, seems to be sincerely motivated. But it was a bad idea. The Men’s Rights movement is full of assholes, some of them potentially quite dangerous. Still, not every MRA is an Elliot Rodger in the making, and this kind of hyperbole doesn’t help those who are trying to expose the true terribleness of the Men’s Rights movement.
After their initial outrage wore off, MRAs decided to treat the petition as a golden opportunity for self-martyrdom. Dean Esmay of A Voice for Men urged fellow MRAs – sorry, MHumanRAs – to sign it themselves, perhaps not realizing that it might prove difficult to convince the world they’re being oppressed by a petition if they’re the ones most actively collecting signatures for it. (Esmay also took a moment to compare me to Bull Connor, which seems a tad odd, to say the least.)
