Some critics of this blog complain whenever I quote some crackpot commenter rather than one of the “big names” in the Men’s Rights movement. Sometimes, it turns out, the crackpot commenters ARE the “big names” in the Men’s Rights movement.
The bad publicity bonanza for Men’s Rights activists continues — and it couldn’t happen to a worse group of people.
Yesterday, the Daily Beast published a long-awaited piece on the Men’s Rights movement, and it’s a doozy. If you’re a regular reader of this site, trust me, you’ll want to read the whole thing, like now. The piece, by R. Tod Kelly, is long — some 6000 words — but worth it.
It’s mostly on the money, but with a few notable flaws.
Here’s what it gets right:
1) It captures the pervasive misogyny of the Men’s Rights movement in general, and of A Voice for Men in particular.
2) In an extended section, it profiles AVFM’s John Hembling, and tears apart some of his most blatant lies — including the now legendary box-cutter incident, in which Hembling claims to have stared down a mob of 20-30 feminists brandishing boxcutters.
As Kelly notes:
Vancouver police records show that there was indeed an altercation in September of 2012 between Hembling and others seeking to tear down men’s rights posters. However, according to the police, Hembling was arguing with two or three people, not being accosted by a “mob” of any size. When questioned by the authorities, neither Hembling nor witnesses mentioned seeing any weapons. …
Curiously enough, Hembling actually videotaped the events and had his AV4M Radio partner Karen Straughan post it online. The discussion with the police has been conveniently edited out, but the rest of the video clearly matches police records and not Hembling’s story. There are only a few young men taking down Hembling’s posters, and the video shows them choosing to ignore him except when he engages them in conversation. One of the men is seen using a box cutter to take down the flyers, but at no time does he use it as a weapon, raise his voice, or threaten Hembling in any way.
Kelly found some troubling, er, discrepancies in another story told by Hembling. Kelly writes:
According to Hembling, sometime around 1995 he was on his way home at 2:00 am after working a night shift when he came upon [a sexual] assault in progress. He says he used his steel-toed boots as weapons to chase off the perpetrator. When the victim was too distraught to speak with him, Hembling says he contacted the police, waited until they arrived, and then quietly left without speaking to them. He says they later tracked him down at his home, where he gave a statement.
It’s hard to know whether this event actually occurred or not. There is no record—at least, not in the Vancouver police files—of Hembling being a material witness to a rape, and police blotters from that time period do not show a crime that matches Hembling’s description. However, this does not necessarily mean the event did not occur. Vancouver police did not fully computerize their data until 2002, and it is possible the police never reported the incident. Hembling claims the incident took place at a specific hospital, where he says he worked as a contractor for 18 months. The address he gives, however, is for a different hospital in a completely different part of the city. This raises the curious question of whether Hembling forget the name of the hospital he contracted with for 18 months, or whether he forget what part of the city he worked in for that same period of time. The real truth of the matter is anyone’s guess, because Hembling wouldn’t comment to The Beast on that or any other matter.
In other words: Cool story, bro.
3) Another thing the story gets right: it makes clear just how little the Men’s Rights movement does to actually help men — and how in many ways it can actually be terribly damaging to men who need real help. As Kelly writes,
the movement’s radicals might … do … immediate damage to those who most desperately need the MRM to succeed.
“When we talk about recovery from trauma and abuse, there were two things that helped me,” says Chris Anderson, executive director of the male-victim advocacy group Male Survivor and a sexual abuse survivor himself. “The first was realizing that I’m not alone; the second was hearing that recovery was possible.” Anderson is quick to dissociate himself from the men’s rights movement: “In [the MRM] people get that first message, that they’re not alone. I don’t know that they ever get the second message. And when they don’t get that second message, it turns into an endless feedback loop and eventually they say, ‘Oh my God, all of society is f**ked.’”
Indeed, Kelly writes:
It is telling to note that of the professional male-victim advocacy organizations I spoke with, every single one specifically asked that I not allow readers to think they were in any way related to the MRM.
But there are also some things that I think the article gets wrong.
1) I think it gives Men’s Rights activists way too much credit for their supposed good intentions. While there are some MRAs who do seem to be motivated at least in part by a sincere desire to help men, most of the MRAs I’ve encountered in the 3 years of doing this blog have clearly been motivated primarily by anger and hatred of feminists — and women in general. They don’t really seem to give a shit about doing anything to actually improve the lives of men — and the paucity of their accomplishments reflects this. In its relatively brief lifespan, AVFM has raised many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Has it set up any shelters or hotlines or helplines for men? Not a one.
2) It wildly exaggerates the importance of Hembling to the MRM — especially ironic given thatHembling has been more or less AWOL in recent months, producing only a few short videos and one article for AVFM.
I was, however, kind of amazed to learn that Price is married … and to a feminist. No, really.
4) The article, while solidly researched, contains some small errors and simplifications that will no doubt give MRAs and others the excuse they need to dismiss the whole thing. Kelly refers to Reddit subreddits as Reddit “threads!” He refers to Matt Forney as an MRA! Oh no!
Still, whatever its flaws, this is an important piece, and one that tells a lot of truth about the Men’s Rights movement. Again — go read it!
The He-Man Manosphere Cat Fight Continues! The long-awaited 20/20 story on the Manosphere did not, alas, run as scheduled last night — it’s been postponed until who knows when — but the Men’s Rightsy infighting it inspired continues!
Yesterday, you may recall, the Spearhead’s WF Price called out A Voice for Men’s Paul Elam for his alleged naiveté in going on the show in the first place, and for generally being a shitty backstabbing narcissistic asshole — all fair enough criticisms.
Well now Elam and his AVFM attack squad have responded to Price’s attack in the comments on the Spearhead– as various Spearhead readers have stepped forward to offer their own thoughts on Elam, many of them even less flattering than Price’s screed.
Paul Elam in a web-only clip from the 20/20 segment that never ran on television.
Paul Elam, the founder and primary animating force behind the website A Voice for Men, is probably, for better or worse, the most influential figure in the Men’s Rights movement (or, as he prefers to call it, the Men’s Human Rights Movement).
Elam is also a fierce misogynist with a penchant for angry, violent rhetoric full of only-slightly veiled threats. But don’t take my word for it. Perhaps the best way to get to know Mr. Elam is through his own words.
So here are some of Elam’s thoughts on a variety of issues, taken from postings on his own website. I have linked each quote back to its source on A Voice for Men.
[EDIT: The 20/20 story has been postponed] So the Men’s Rightsers are already up in arms about the upcoming 20/20 story on the Manosphere — which, to remind everyone, is showing today, that is, Friday, October 18 at 10 PM EST on ABC. So far I’ve run across angry posts about it on A Voice for Men (naturally), the Men’s Rights subreddit, Rex Patriarch, Stares at the World and Captain Capitalism. Heck, the good Captain even made a rambling 30-minute video on the subject; skip forward ten minutes to hear his misogynistic tirade against the two women who wrote the brief teaser piece now up on the ABC website, complete with “funny” voices. He even calls them “twats.”
But so far the most interesting response comes from W. F. Price of The Spearhead, who uses the occasion to launch an attack on … Paul Elam. Yep. It’s a Manosphere He-Man-Cat-Fight.
A Voice for Men’s Paul Elam: Not ready for his closeup
It’s here at last! After numerous delays, the 20/20 story looking at the manosphere — and the part it plays in the online harassment of women — will be running on ABC this Friday, October 18, at 10 PM EST. Among the featured participants: the always charming Paul Elam of A Voice for Men; Anita Sarkeesian, the much-harassed feminist video game critic; and Jaclyn Friedman, the ass-kicking founder of Women, Action & the Media.
Here’s a teaser story on the ABC website which suggests that the 20/20 piece isn’t exactly going to be a triumphant moment in the history of the Men’s Rights Movement.
Naturally, the comments section over there is already filled with A Voice for Menners crying foul and spouting nonsense.
EDIT: And stop by here Friday to live chat during the show! (Well, live comment, anyway.)
Our dear friend W.F. Price of The Spearhead celebrated Columbus Day yesterday with a post suggesting that “American girls” are too weak-minded to deserve college educations.
Price’s misogyny is nothing new, but what, you may wonder, is the connection to Columbus Day? Well, you see, Price ran across a column in the Daily Nebraskan by a female student named Shelby Fleig that was, well, rather critical of Mr. Columbus, pointing out, among other things, that he kidnapped and enslaved many of those he encountered in the Americas.
So a fella on the Men’s Rights subreddit made this poster, which he’s planning to post in the vicinity of the Women’s Studies Department at his school, assuming he can find it.
Since I know that a lot of females read this blog, I thought I’d ask you all just which of these Unchecked Female Privileges (There’s Nothing “Benevolent” About Them) are your favorites. You can pick more than one! (I know how inherently greedy you feemales are.)
Has he missed any important ones?
Non-women are allowed to post in this thread as well, but only if they preface their comments with “If it may please the feemales, might I humbly suggest that … .”
What on earth is she talking about? She quotes one of her readers, someone called Just Saying, explaining the peculiar logic behind this assertion in a little more detail:
Feminists lost long ago. Men are in control – at least the ones that understand. We get to call the shots – now instead of being able to keep house, have children, and cook (very, very few women can cook these days) women are ONLY sex-objects. It is the only thing they have to offer to a man, that will get a man’s attention and to hold it for a while. And we don’t have to marry them to get it …
Feminism has brought about all of the things they say they hate – women today only bring sex to the equation. So I have to thank Feminism – I doubt that young women would be as skilled, or as open to oral sex, anal sex, and every other type of sex, without it. And for that, I say, “Thank you Feminism.” If there were a patriarchy, I doubt they could have ever come up with something as beneficial to men. No one would have believed women were that dumb.
The Sunshiny One uses this as a starting point for a bizarre post purporting to show that “feminism has also reduced many women to being childless careerists who must purchase other women’s reproductive capabilities.”
But let’s forget about Mary for now and take a somewhat deeper look at this whole “feminism reduces women to sex objects” argument — which only makes sense if, like Just Saying, you define the worth of women as consisting only of 1) sex and 2) “housewifely duties” like cooking, cleaning, and bearing children.
If you simply ignore all of a woman’s other abilities and accomplishments, and basically her humanity, well, I suppose you could say that the worth of a woman with no interest in cooking, cleaning, or children was “reduced” to sex.
But what a strange way to look at the world, to base your judgement of a person’s worth on a small subset of human interests and abilities and to condemn them if they aren’t enthusiastic experts in these pursuits. You might as well go around dismissing everyone who’s not a proficient accordion player.
The other strange thing about Just Saying’s argument is that it doesn’t even make sense on its own terms; it requires a willful blindness as to how the world works these days. Women make up roughly half the workforce today. Yet babies are still being born and raised. Meals are still getting cooked. Homes are still getting cleaned. It may not always be a wife in a traditional marriage doing all the cooking and cleaning and baby-raising, but couples — and single parents — are making the arrangements they need to in order to get all these things done.
So is the “feminism reduces women to nothing more than sex objects” simply an indication that certain kinds of men — and women — have a hard time recognizing women as full human beings?
Well, to some degree. But I’m pretty sure that even the most backwards thinking misogynists of the manosphere recognize that there’s more to women than cooking, cleaning, baby-making, and sex.
No, I think their attempts to reduce women to these things stem from their own defensiveness over the gains of women — and not just in the workforce, and in politics, and the wider culture.
Consider how Just Saying describes the sex-having women of today. They’re no shrinking violets. They’re not passive receptacles. They’re “skilled … open to oral sex, anal sex, and every other type of sex.”
In other words, they’re women with sexual agency. They’re women who are engaging in sex for their own pleasure, for their own reasons — not simply as a lure to capture a man to marry.
And I think this makes a lot of men deeply uneasy — especially the sorts of men who inhabit the manosphere. That’s why so many of them are so quick to shout “slut” at the very same women they’re so obsessed with pursuing.
That’s why, when they’re lucky enough to find a woman who’s enthusiastically in charge of her own sexuality, they have to pretend to themselves that sex is all she has.
Seems his “freeloader and loser” of an ex-wife — a former drug addict — sits around the house eating bon bons while happily collecting $2500 a month in child support for the five year old kid they had together. Also, she treats him with disrespect. “Meanwhile,” the poor fella wrote, for an added dose of pathos, “I have to survive on PB&J.”
