We Hunted The Mammoth
So A Voice for Men, classy joint that it is, “reported” yesterday that Elizabeth Vargas of ABC’s 20/20, who interviewed Paul Elam for a 20/20 piece that has yet to air, has checked into rehab in order to deal with her alcoholism. The general reaction of commenters there ranged from “ha ha” to “well, maybe once she’s cured she’ll see how oppressed we men really are.” Those aren’t exact quotes. The exact quotes are below.
How gullible is Paul Elam, grand pooh-bah of A Voice for Men? Well, he just wrote an frothingly angry denunciation of a Canadian business school dean based on an obviously phony story on a satirical website called The Syrup Trap. A website that declares at the top of the page that it is “Canada’s favourite humour magazine.” A website whose logo is a cartoon beaver with a plastic cup on its head.
The website Vitamin W did a little interview/profile of me; check it out here. When I was talking to the writer I got a bit more ranty than usual, so some of the quotes are a bit blunt.
One point of clarification on the references to my feminism at the start of the piece: what I was trying to convey was that while I was very much a feminist when I started Man Boobz, this was just a sort of taken-for-granted aspect of my life, not something I spent a great deal of time thinking about on a daily basis. Doing Man Boobz has made me much more of a feminist, both ideologically and in terms of how much of my time I spend thinking about and reading about and discussing feminist issues.
Also, the thing about me being driven by how much these guys annoy me was a reference to my motivation when I started the site, not to why I do the site now.
There are a few points where the author, well, oversimplifies things. To say that PUA sites “generally promote rape,” for example, isn’t quite right, though there are certainly PUA sites that encourage various forms of sexual harassment and have seriously problematic notions about consent. Our old nemesis Roosh, of course, has flat-out stated that by the standards of American law he raped a woman who was too intoxicated to consent. (You can find his confession quoted here.)
Anyway, let me know what you think. I’m sure the MRAs will.
I recently rediscovered a bunch of pictures of my cats from their kitten days, and I feel I need to share some of them with you. I’ve also provided a few more recent shots for purposes of comparison. Enjoy, please!
Is there something about Men’s Rights Activists that renders them utterly incapable of admitting a mistake? The other day, I performed a bit of rudimentary factchecking on a collection of allegedly “misandrist” quotes assembled by Jonathan Taylor of A Voice for Male Students.
Among other things. I pointed out that the drastically truncated version of a Marilyn French quote he posted completely misrepresented the actual meaning of what she had said, making it appear that she was charging the majority of men with killing, or beating, or raping women and/or molesting their own daughters:
[TRIGGER WARNING: QUOTES CONTAIN TRANSPHOBIA, ADVOCACY OF VIOLENCE TOWARDS TRANS WOMEN]
Pickup guru and human stain Roosh V. continues his search for attention at any cost. His latest grab for page views takes the form of a nasty little post on Return of Kings ostensibly “warning” his readers how they can protect themselves from evil “[t]rannies [who] will try to trick a player to get some loving.”
The post, written by someone calling himself redpiller1985, is a transphobic rant in the form of a jokey list purporting to show guys “8 Ways To Spot A Transsexual.” Redpiller1985 starts off by declaring that
It’s not just betas and closet conning alphas trying to hold us back. It’s cross-dressing men who are so mentally ill that they think they’re women. They’re delusional omega men who think acting like a caricature of the women who don’t give them play is how they can finally get some sexual pleasure from unwitting men.
The “humor” of the post is so strained it’s doubtful it would even elicit a chuckle from even the most egregious transphobe. Redpiller1985 mocks “trannies” for allegedly having silly names “[l]ike the name Jessica but spelled as Jessika.” He think’s its hilarious that they don’t like being referred to as “he,” and that some “trannies” use words like “kyriarchy” and “cisgender.” He thinks it’s risible that “[t]ranssexuals have an incredibly high suicide and drug abuse rate..”
Indeed, a portion of the article is devoted to mocking the suicide attempt of a trans game designer; I’m not going to quote any of that.
Redpiller1985 ends by proclaiming, with mock sincerity, that all this nastiness is really an attempt to help poor “trannies” get their lives in order:
We as red pillers must even tell the most beta blue pillers in existence when the “hot girl” at the bar is really a lying mentally ill man in a dress. If we stand up to their mental illness and call them out instead of making their delusions worse. It will inspire these disfigured men to stop being omegas and start being true men again.
In the comments, someone calling himself Ben “Race War Now” Garrison declares that “Trannies will be the first to hang on the Day of the Rope.” Another commenter posts a photo of a murdered trans woman lying dead in the street, with the note “[h]ere’s a good example photo of what happens once trannies get found out.”
Not all the commenters are on board with the transbashing. One suggests that
[T]rannies (especially the Asian kind) are super friendly and outgoing. No girl is every as nice or friendly to the strange guys around her.
That bit of racial and sexual fetisihization is about as “trans-friendly” as it gets on Roosh’s hate site.
The MRAs have a new list! A list of evil, man-hating quotations, that is. This list, put together by A Voice for Male Students, has a rather pretentious title: “The language of misandry in academia: a collection of quotes by faculty members, students, and administrators.”
I think we’re a bit overdue for another open thread for personal stuff. As per usual, no trolls, no flames, no being a butthead.
I’ll paste in some recent personal comments from other threads.
I don’t know how I missed it, but a couple of weeks back Vice posted a short video about that EARTH-SHATTERINGLY HISTORIC Men’s Rights rally in Toronto that captured the attention of the world a tiny fraction of a percentage of people in the world (including the people at it and readers of this blog) a little over a month ago.
Alas, WordPress won’t let me embed the video here, but you all need to go look at it. Not only does it capture pretty well what a dinky event it was, but it also contains a bunch of mini-interviews with some A Voice for Men folks that are rather revealing.
The most revealing one of the bunch starts about 2:40 into the video, when AVFM’s Suzanne McCarley explains that
Today I feel an irresistible urge to post music videos. Above, an awesome interpretation of a rock classic that is sure to get you PUMPED for the weekend.
Below, enjoy the silky voice of Phil Collins.