Search Results for "john the other"
Manosphere civil war? MGTOWforums vs. A Voice for Men
Uh oh! Do I sense a manosphere civil war coming on? Over on MGTOWforums, some of the regulars are spitting mad at A Voice for Men. In a thread with the lovely title “So it begins: AVfM diluted by cuntspeak,” the MGTOWer calling himself fairi5fair takes aim at a recent post by – get this! – a woman on AVFM.
Paul Elam on “stupid lying whores,” Rebecca Watson, and how he never claims to be a victim even though he totally is one.
Paul Elam, in a rare moment of calm
In the fast-paced, perpetually busy world of today, we don’t all have time to read every post on A Voice for Men. So here is an edited version of Paul Elam’s latest post, on Rebecca Watson of Skepchick. And whores. And how he personally doesn’t spend all his time claiming to be a victim, even though he totally is one, in case you forgot since the last time he reminded you of that.
Here’s Paul:
Whores … typical whore … Main Street walking, garden variety anybody’s whore … honest whore. … corporate whore … corporate whores … whorish sexual symmetry … stupid whore … stupid whore … whore … lying whore … whore … lying whore … whore … lying whore … corporate whore … a lying whore can also be a corporate whore … whoring for the cause … whore … PZ Myers … stupid, lying whore … not just a lying whore who also happens to be a stupid whore … a different subspecies of whore altogether … stupid, lying whore … whore that rigorously abandons intellect, rationale, evidence, decency and compassion, and also fosters much deserved hostility toward themselves … stupid, lying whore … stupid, lying whore … .
Paul Elam, meet Tom Martin.
No, women aren’t better than men. But the guys at A Voice for Men are doing their best to make it seem that way.
Putting women on pedestals: Not good feminism.
Roger Ebert recently wrote a well-intentioned but misguided faux-feminist blog post setting forth the thesis that “Women are better than men.” Here’s the gist of it, from his opening paragraph:
Women are nicer than men. There are exceptions. Most people of both sexes are probably fairly nice, given the nature of their upbringing and opportunities. But in terms of their lifelong natures, women are kinder, more empathetic, more generous. And the sooner more of them take positions of power, the better our chances as a species.
Here’s how to respond appropriately to this sort of argument, courtesy of Jill at Feministe:
I love me some Roger Ebert, but this is a big piece of crap. His point basically comes down to, “Women are nurturing and wonderful and non-violent, men are competitive and want to see boobs, because Evolution.” … Most people are capable of great kindness; most people are capable of being total assholes. The degree to which any of us displays any of these traits depends largely on circumstance and partly on individual personality and temperament. Those things are certainly influenced by gender, but our gender does not in fact hard-wire us to be nice or awful.
Here’s how to respond inappropriately to this sort of argument, courtesy of John the Other at A Voice for Men:
[Y]es, it’s another one of those articles. Men are bad, women are good, men are worse, women are better, men are the worst thing ever, and women are just the best, squee!!! …
Ebert, in his attempt to ingratiate himself to a mostly female audience has done what countless other approval seeking men have done. Simply, to metaphorically prostrate himself – declaring – look, I’m a good man, not like those other bad men, you see how I heap scorn on them and flatter you? Approve of me!…
Ebert’s male-abasing and false esteem is a tired and monotonous repetition of standard gender ideology.
Sing along with me, you all know the words!
Women are better then men!
Boom boom boom!
They do everything better than them!
Boom boom boom!
Ladies are generally nicer!
Quack quack quack!
Their thoughts and feelings are higher!
Quack quack quack!
Girls and women are smarter!
Bing! Bang! Smash!
To keep up, men must try harder!
Clang! Bang! Bash!
Well, there’s a thoughtful argument.
Naturally, the commenters at AVfM are happy to join in the fun.
Shrek6 trots out the old “we hunted the mammoth” argument:
[E]verything on this earth from the knickers these women wear on their fat buts, all the way through to just about every single thing they touch in their day, up to and including homes, buildings, cars, trains, rockets, and the food they stuff down their throats, has all been either invented or produced by those useless ‘less than’ human, men. What a waste of space those men are!
Yep, I can feel a man strike coming on.
If all the men and boys in this world pulled the pin and sat on their buts for a month, the world would come to a grinding halt and anarchy would reign. All the women would be seen crying, screeching at men with gnashing teeth. Then they would eventually come begging.
Yep, that day is coming to these over indulged women. That day is coming!
Andybob, meanwhile, offers this analysis of what he sees as the gender enemy:
There are four main categories of women:
1) Women who care about the men in their lives, but never make the connection that their naked misandry contributes to the misery of these men. Most of those women who whooped and cackled when RegisterHer lifer, Sharon Osborne, expressed delight when an innocent man was genitally mutilated belong in this category. They would not have cackled quite so much if someone had brutalised their sons. Other women’s sons? No problem. It has ever been thus: white feather campaign in WWI.
2) Women who may pay lip service to caring about the men in their lives, but in reality, see them in the same way they see all other men – as utility objects to be manipulated and exploited. Such women don’t think of the men in their lives at all, except when they want something from them.
3) Feminists. These range from the mild (man-hating bigots), to the radical (man-hating bigots who advocate genocide and eugenics).
4) Women MRAs. These are rare women (I’ve never seen one, even in captivity), who regard men as actual people with collective and innate value. I can count them on two hands with fingers to spare.
Men have been struggling for many decades now with nary a peep from women. There is a reason for this.
They don’t care.
Feminism has provided today’s pampered princesses with the privilege-stuffed, consequence-free Nirvana that they believe they’re entitled to. Do you really think they can be swayed with reason and logic? Have you ever tried to discuss men’s rights with women? They will show concern for some imaginary, hypothetical female from some Third World country before they give two shits about the son, brother or friend standing in front of them. …
We are in a battle against a powerful, well-financed and establishment-supported entity which has succeeded in stealing our rights in every sphere. This has been done with the silent collusion of vast numbers of women. As such, a few “derogatory remarks” are the least they deserve.
Guys, I hate to have to tell you this, but you’re sort of making it look like Ebert might have a point.
Happily, I know that you all are statistical outliers, and that your raving misogyny (while it may reflect views common amongst AVFM readers, as evidenced by the upvotes those comments got) doesn’t reflect the views of most men. Heck, even some Men’s Rights Redditors are getting sick of your bullshit.
The SPLC responds to MRAs critical of its report on the Men’s Rights movement [UPDATED w/ NEW LINKS]
Arthur Goldwag, the author of the SPLC’s recent report on hatred in the Men’s Rights movement, has now responded to some of the hysteria his article provoked amongst MRAs. As Goldwag notes, contrary to what most MRAs seemed to conclude from the report,
the SPLC did not label MRAs as members of a hate movement; nor did our article claim that the grievances they air on their websites – false rape accusations, ruinous divorce settlements and the like – are all without merit. But we didcall out specific examples of misogyny and the threat, overt or implicit, of violence.
Thomas James Ball, for example, who was hailed as a martyr on so many men’s rights forums, called for arson attacks on courthouses and police stations. The Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik wrote extensively about the evils of feminism. We included as much as we did about Register-Her.com because it is so intimidating to its targets, not all of whom are criminals. When Elam accused Vliet Tiptree, a pseudonymous contributor to RadFem Hub, of “calling for extermination of half the human race; the male half, that is,” he offered a cash reward for her real identity. The names and locations of several candidates were publically aired.
Goldwag also takes a look at some of the radical feminists that have become boogeywomen for so many MRAs, and deals with other MRA complaints.
If you’re a regular reader of Man Boobz you’ll want to read the whole thing.
The Men’s Rights subreddit has already linked to Goldwag’s article, which has provoked not only the predictable SPLC-bashing but also some criticism of A Voice for Men and Paul Elam.
Obviously Elam and other MRAs will respond to Goldwag’s latest as well. Post links in the comments below as you find them, and I’ll add them to this post.
EDITED TO ADD: And, right on schedule, AVfM responds to Goldwag’s response. It’s a John the Other post, so be prepared to read a lot of words saying not very much.
On his own blog, Goldwag responds to Mr. The Other.
Goldwag’s piece also got some criticism from the STFUfauxminists Tumblr blog for quoting a RadFem known for her transphobia.
I’ll add more links as I find them.
ETA 2: MORE LINKS
Does A Voice for Men really think that firebombing is a form of non-violence?
Reading through some comments on Men’s Rights hub A Voice for Men the other day, I ran across a fairly bloodthirsty contribution from an MRA with the charming nickname Brutal Antipathy, suggesting that the Occupy Wall Street protesters needed a bit of what he called “the ol’ Tienanmen Square treatment.”
Mr. Antipathy’s rhetorical outburst struck me as fairly typical of the tough-guy rhetoric that the site’s regulars love to indulge in — though usually the targets of the rhetoric are feminists, not Occupy Wall Street activists.
So I was a bit surprised to see site founder Paul Elam respond with this:
It seems a little odd for Elam to claim to be shocked — shocked! — to find such rhetoric on his site. Elam, after all, seems to positively revel in making his own vaguely threatening pronouncements towards his ideological enemies.
In a recent fundraising appeal, for example, Elam let out all the stops:
We now have a team of individuals that goes beyond what we advertise on our pages, and we are gearing up to add a new doomsday prophesy to 2012. Let’s put it this way: The fembots better hope the Mayan’s were right about next year, because they would rather deal with that than the things we are cooking up. …
Progress for men will not be gained by debate, reason or typical channels of grievance available to segments of the population that the world actually gives a damn about. The progress we need will only be realized by inflicting enough pain on the agents of hate, in public view, that it literally shocks society out of its current coma.
Elam is purposefully vague about just what he means by “inflicting pain,” but it is hard not to read this comment as a threat of something dire.
Others on the site are similarly fond of this sort of vague, threatening language. MRA blogger Fidelbogen, recently brought on board as a contributor to AVfM, let loose in a recent comment on those who think MRAs should tone down their rhetoric towards feminists and other enemies:
Apparently, Elam believes that the deliberate vagueness of these kinds of threats makes them shining examples of Gandhian non-violence — or at least that it gives the site the requisite “plausible deniability” if — when? — someone actually moves beyond the threats to actual violence.
It’s ok, evidently, to talk about “inflicting pain” on your enemies, so long as you don’t specify just how. It’s ok to boast about frightening your enemies, to muse about “stalking” individual feminists, to post their personal information online, and so on and so on.
Heck, apparently it’s not even a problem if someone, using the personal information provided on the site, actually tracks down individuals targeted by Elam and pals and quite literally kills them. As AVfM managing editor John the Other put it in a recent post (which I wrote about here):
And what if they get killed David? What if rather than be arrested – as promoters of hate, and public advocates of murder, what if these depraved and murderous female supremacists come to harm at the hands of a citizen. If that happens, it will mean that a society’s system of law, designed to prevent hate organizations, and to allow redress of grievance through non violent due process is gone, wiped out by your ideology of violence and hate.
Nonetheless, JtO, like Elam, insists that “I do not and will not lend myself to the support of violence, or indeed, of murder.”
But all this dancing around the issue of violence is rather a moot point, given the one rather striking exception that Elam has allowed to his “no explicit advocacy of violence” rule.
And that is the terrorist manifesto he’s been hosting on his site since last summer.
I’m referring, of course, to the lengthy manifesto written by Tom Ball, a man who burned himself to death on the steps of a courthouse in Keane, New Hampshire last summer in a protest against what he saw as unfair treatment in family court.
Ball has been hailed as a hero in numerous articles on AVfM, and he is mentioned in an “invocation” in the new theme song for AVfM Radio.
The manifesto is posted on AVfM — in its “activism” category.
What sort of “activism” did Ball advocate? Hint: It involves Molotov cocktails, and government buildings.
In his words (emphasis mine):
So boys, we need to start burning down police stations and courthouses. … [T]he dirty deeds are being carried out by our local police, prosecutors and judges. These are the people we pay good money to protect us and our families. And what do we get for our tax money? Collaborators who are no different than the Vichy of France or the Quislings of Norway during the Second World War. All because they go along to get along. They are an embarrassment, the whole lot of them. And they need to be held accountable. So burn them out. …
There is no evidence that the police, courts, or government is planning to do anything different in the immediate future. And they will not do anything different until we make it so uncomfortable that they must change. Bureaucracy at its worst. So burn them out. This is too important to be using that touchy- feeling coaching that is so popular with business these days. You need to flatten them, like Wile E. Coyote. They need to be taught never to replace the rule of law. BURN-THEM-OUT!
Most of the police stations built in New England over the last 20 years are stone or brick. Fortunately, the roofs are still wood. The advantage of fire on the roof is that it is above the sprinklers. But even the sprinklers going off work to our advantage. There is no way they can work in a building with six inches of water. And I am certain we will disrupt their momentum once they start working out of a FEMA
At this point the AVfM editors cut Ball off in mid-sentence, and insert this “Editor’s note”:
Editor’s note:
Several paragraphs in this copy of Mr Ball’s original letter have been omitted. The omitted paragraphs contained detailed instructions on the manufacture and use of simple incendiary devices.
If you are really interested in seeing the omitted sections, you can find the complete manifesto elsewhere in the Mansophere.
Ball was quite serious about all this, and hoped that his self-immolation would inspire other “activists” to “manufacture and use” his favored sort of “simple incendiary devices,” as the AVfM editors gingerly put it. Ball himself was a bit more blunt:
I only managed to get the main door of the Cheshire County Courthouse in Keene, NH. I would appreciate it if some of you boys would finish the job for me. They harmed my children. The place is evil. So take it out. …
And bring a can of spray paint to these fires. Paint the word COLLABORATORS ( two L’s with an S on the end) on the building before you burn it.
Ball frankly acknowledged that if others followed his suggestions, people would die:
There will be some casualties in this war. Some killed, some wounded, some captured. Some of them will be theirs. Some of the casualties will be ours.
How does Ball’s explicit advocacy of terrorist acts directed at government buildings, acts that if carried out would almost inevitably mean the deaths of people within those buildings, square with Elam’s purported no-advocacy-of-violence policy for his website?
You’ll have to ask him. I have no fucking clue.
“And what if they get killed?” A Voice for Men as an antifeminist Witchfinder General
So John the Other has responded to my post about A Voice for Men’s “bounty” on the makers of the SCUM video. It’s a fairly unhinged rant, even by his standards. Here’s the money quote:
It’s a bizarre bit of circular logic: if some deranged asshole literally kills one or more of the videomakers, this is proof that the Swedish justice system isn’t working, which therefore justifies the deranged asshole’s actions. So the existence of vigilante violence justifies vigilante violence that justifies vigilante violence.
Since when is making a video a capital crime?
After all this, John rather bizarrely claims that “[u]nlike David Futrelle, I do not and will not lend myself to the support of violence, or indeed, of murder.”
That’s because, according to his daft logic, shooting the videomakers would count as “self defense,” because evidently someone posting a video on YouTube that you don’t like is equivalent to someone coming at you with a knife.
While challenging AVfM’s “bounty” — without actually defending the video in any way — apparently means that I support murder. Go figure.
Vincent Price as the Witchfinder General
But dwelling too much on the specifics of this one case is to miss the larger point. A Voice for Men has essentially set itself up as a sort of antifeminist Witchfinder General. In the 1968 cult film of that name, you may remember, the corrupt Witchfinder tested whether the accused were witches by lowering them into water; those who floated were judged guilty, and burned at the stake. Those who sank were innocent, but dead.
Paul Elam and his sidekick John have a similar approach. They intend to do feminists harm, to “fuck their shit up,” regardless of what they’ve done or said. None of those who have been placed in the Register-Her “registry” as “bigots” deserve to be smeared or harassed (or put on the phony “registry” in the first place). But if you look at what they are ostensibly there for, well, you’ll discover that it matters not at all to Elam whether they sink or float. The point is to harass feminists; almost any excuse will do.
One of those on the “registry,” a radical feminist who posts online as Vliet Tiptree , has indeed said some fairly vile things about the male gender; she is the only one who might conceivably be described as a “bigot.” But others are there on trumped up “charges” based on highly tendentious readings of some of their writing; it’s clear that they’ve been targeted mainly because they have been publicly critical of the men’s rights movement.
Meanwhile, another of the alleged feminist bigots is not a feminist at all, but rather a traditional-minded “mom blogger” who aroused Elam’s fury by saying that she didn’t want male daycare volunteers taking her daughter to the bathroom, and for suggesting (incorrectly) that men make up 99% of abusers. (She has since apologized, but remains on the “registry.”)
And one recent candidate for inclusion, a feminist blogger whom Elam has pledged to “stalk,” seems to have made it on Elam’s naughty list simply because she has helped to highlight how pervasive harassment of women and feminists is online. Complain about harassment; get harassed. But Elam’s “critiques” of her are all suspiciously vague. It’s not clear if he has read even a single one of her blog posts. Nonetheless, he promises her that
by the time we are done you will wax nostalgic over the days when all you had to deal with was someone expressing a desire to fuck you up your shopworn ass.
In a post from some months back, Elam offered a similarly psychosexually charged justification for his campaign to “Fuck Their Shit Up.” Directly addressing the “feminazi scumbags reading this right now,” he declared:
I am not going to stop. You see, I find you, as a feminist, to be a loathsome, vile piece of human garbage. I find you so pernicious and repugnant that the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection.
Let’s repeat that last bit for emphasis:
the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection.
Does anyone still doubt that the aim of A Voice for Men and Register-Her.com in publishing personal information of their enemies is to intimidate – indeed, to terrorize?
Does anyone still doubt that their campaign is driven by hate?
Does anyone still doubt that they don’t give a shit if their actions cause someone to be physically assaulted or even killed?
Men’s Rights site A Voice for Men offers $1000 “bounty” for personal information on Swedish feminists
A Voice for Men, one of the most influential and popular Men’s Rights websites, is now offering a $1000 “bounty” for anyone able to track down the personal information of several Swedish women involved in a tasteless video advertising a theater production based on Valarie Solanas’ SCUM manifesto. As the anonymous poster calling himself John the Other – the second-in-command at AVfM – put it in a posting yesterday (emphasis in original):
We are asking for the full legal names, home addresses, places of employment, email addresses and contact phone numbers of the women and man who produced and starred in the video described above. We will pay 1000 dollars to any individual who provides and confirms this information, to be paid either directly to themselves or to a charity of their choice.
John explains that this information will be posted on the AVfM-affiliated site Register-Her.com, an “offenders database” that is being used to vilify individual feminists and “Fuck Their Shit Up,” as AVfM head honcho Paul Elam likes to put it. John notes that Regsiter-Her.com also intends to post the “government identification numbers [and] drivers licences” of the women they are able to identify.
John admits plainly that posting such information may put the physical safety of these women at risk from vigilante violence. As he puts it (emphasis mine):
Some individuals may criticize the intent to publish not only names, but also addresses, phone numbers, employers and other personal information – on the grounds that such exposure create a risk of retributive violence against individuals who openly advocate murder based on sex. It is the considered position of the editorial board of AVfM that any such risks are out-weighed by the ongoing hazard to the public of these individuals continuing to operate in anonymity.
The comments posted on the article at AVfM suggest that such “retributive” violence is a real possibility. Indeed, here’s the very first comment (which currently has 17 upvotes from readers of the site):
A commenter called Xnomolos, in another upvoted comment, adds:
i would love to hunt down these women myself.
JinnBottle responds to this comment by advising “all men to start carrying guns.”
The commenters on AVfM have already uncovered the identities of all of the women involved in the video. The blogger Fidelbogen has been the most active internet detective so far.
There is no question that the video itself is offensive, and designed to provoke. You can see it here; I’m not going to embed it on this site. If you don’t want to watch it: it depicts a young woman shooting a man in the head for no reason. Afterwards the woman and her gleeful, giggling accomplices do a victory dance, then lick the blood from the dead man’s head. A message at the end urges viewers to “Do Your Part.”
Every feminist I know who has seen the video has been appalled by it. I’m appalled by it. It’s hateful, and it’s wrong.
But John the Other, and the other commenters on AVfM, claim that it is more than this: that that the video of the staged murder, intended to provide publicity for a theater production based on Solanas’ notorious SCUM manifesto, is quite literally an open call for the murder of men. As John the Other puts it:
Open advocation of murder cannot be allowed in a civil society, without that society devolving into a culture of brutal violence.
Evidently he has no problem with, or has somehow not noticed, the comments on AVfM fantasizing about shooting and killing the women involved in the video.
Is the video a literal call to murder? Is it, as one AVfM commenter puts it, evidence of a “conspiracy to commit mass murder?” No. Violence and murder have been dramatized in the theater since its beginnings. No one accuses Sophocles of advocating fratricide and incest, though both are dealt with in his play Oedipus Rex. No one accuses Shakespeare of advocating mass murder, though many of his most famous plays have body counts that put many horror films to shame.
Does the tag line at the end of the video – “do your part” – transform the video from a depiction of murder into an open call for it? No. The “threat,” such as it is, is vague; it’s not aimed at any specific individuals. It might be seen as akin to someone wearing a t-shirt that says “kill ‘em all, let God sort them out” – tasteless and offensive, but not a literal threat. “Kill ‘Em All” is actually the name of Metallica’s first album. While a lot of people see James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich et al as pompous idiots, they have not been jailed for conspiracy to commit mass murder. That would be ridiculous.
Someone claiming to have been involved in the SCUM-inspired theatrical production in question has posted several detailed comments on AVfM, explaining that those involved in the production are “not out to get you” and that the video itself was “meant as a viral “wtf?!” to give attention to both the questions that it raises and the play itself.”
By contrast, AVfM is targeting specific individuals, and intends to offer information that would allow anyone intent on doing them harm to quite literally track them to their homes and workplaces. Those fantasizing about killing these woman are not simply making a joke along the lines of “women, can’t live with ‘em; can’t kill ‘em.” They are fantasizing about killing real people, and providing would-be evil-doers maps to their doors.
AVfM is an American site, in English; these specific women live in Sweden. While it is a real possibility, it seems unlikely that anyone reading the site will literally find and murder any of those involved in the SCUM production. At least I hope that this does not come to pass.
I don’t believe that either Paul Elam or John the Other literally wants any feminist to be killed. The real intent behind AVfM’s publishing people’s personal information, it seems clear, is to intimidate feminist writers and activists into shutting up, to make clear that if they post something that offends the internet vigilantes at AVfM they will face the possibility of some deranged individual quite literally showing up at their door intent on doing them harm.
Paul Elam and John the Other claim that they’re not advocating violence. But they are playing a dangerous game here. If some deranged individual, inspired by the hyperbolic anti-feminist rhetoric on AVfM, and armed with information provided by “Register-Her.com,” murders or otherwise harms a feminist blogger or activist or video maker, Elam and his enablers will have blood on their hands. As will those MRAs who continue to publicly support and/or link to AVfM and/or Register-Her.com.
This is not the way a legitimate rights group deals with those who disagree with them. This is what hate groups do.
