We Hunted The Mammoth
Most conspiracy theorists are surprisingly uncreative in their choice of villains, blaming all the ills in the world on one or more alleged evildoers in a fairly short list: the Jews, the government, the Illuminati, space aliens, and a handful of other familiar suspects.
One Men’s Rights activist wants to add a few more names to the list: the women’s magazines Glamour, Allure, Self, Vogue, and, most terrifyingly, Teen Vogue.
Roosh Valizadeh has long fantasized about ruining the professional lives of alleged “social justice warrior” journalists who criticize racist and misogynistic assholes like himself.
Now he’s fantasizing about murdering them.
Yesterday, the pickup guru and “Return of Kings” founder posted a short story on his personal blog about a twentysomething mailroom worker who loses his job after a feckless SJW reporter working for a Gawker-like blog called “The Denouncer” discovers an offensive Facebook post of his and writes a hit piece on him.
Unable to get a decent-paying job, the young man travels to New York and guns down the reporter who, in his mind, ruined his life.
If you have to guess which of the two characters Roosh sympathizes with, you clearly haven’t encountered him before.
In a sort of rebuke to men who complain that they’re “too big” to wear condoms, one Swedish gal pulled a condom over her leg and up nearly to her knee, and posted a pic documenting this feat to Instagram. This pic:
It seems like only yesterday that a Voice for Men’s Paul Elam and John “The Other” Hembling were the bestest of friends, laughing and joking together as they plotted to take over the world. Now, after an ugly falling out, the two are the worstest of enemies, and this whole MGTOW thing is making their ugly divorce even uglier.
You know that little war that Elam has going on with the MGTOWers, or more accurately, the MGTOWFAFPE (Men Going Their Own Way Far Away From Paul Elam)? Mr. Hembling and his girlfriend/comrade Diana Davison have allied themselves with Elam’s many enemies in the MGTOW world, and, well, Elam doesn’t seem to like this very much.
I present to you three recent skirmishes in their little war.
Yesterday, I noted some of the nasty transphobia that had shown up in a recent /gg/ thread on 8chan, undercutting somewhat the claims to respectability we’ve been hearing a lot of from GamerGaters recently. Well, 8channers noticed my post, and weren’t exactly pleased about it.
But their responses to my post, well, they didn’t exactly suggest that the transphobia I saw in the earlier thread was some sort of fluke.
Oh, sure, some of the commenters complained, as my critics often do, that I had “quote mined” the earlier thread.
Do you remember when #GamerGate was young? You know, back before #NotYourShield and Vivian James and bizarrely complicated conspiracy theories involving Gawker, Weird Twitter and some sort of international Jewish conspiracy?
Remember when #GamerGate was still called #BurgersAndFries, and the angry gamebro army was focused on the real enemy of all that is good and true – a young game designer by the name of Zoe Quinn?
If you’ve been feeling nostalgic for those good old days, you’re in luck. A sprawling blog post by a female friend of Quinn’s obsessive, accusatory ex-boyfriend Eron Gjoni takes us back to the dog days of August when his even more sprawling thezoepost was unleashed upon the world.
Last night, as you may have heard, the woman known to #GamerGaters as “Literally Who 2” pulled off a bit of a media coup, appearing on The Colbert Report for a brief interview by the sympathetic Colbert, who gently satirized some of the sillier “arguments” of the Gaters with a series of deliberatly obtuse questions. You know, his regular schtick.
When Anita Sarkeesian posted the picture above (well, a non-blurry version of it) to Twitter yesterday evening, thus alerting the world to her upcoming appearance on Colbert’s show, it set off a wave of panic and despair on 8chan’s /gg/ board, one of the central organizing hubs of the GamerGate “movement.”
Is Anita Sarkeesian secretly trying to hypnotize us all with her videos? Like, literally hypnotize us, in the “now you’re a chicken” sense?
That’s the central insinuation of an inadvertently hilarious video by YouTube blabber Jordan Owen, one of the guys behind that Sarkeesian Effect “documentary” that’s allegedly in the process of being made.
Owen’s video isn’t a particularly new one – he put it out in January – but it’s been recently resurrected by the good folks at A Voice for Men, who reposted it earlier this week, saying that it offered “very thoughtful, erudite” criticism of Sarkeesian that’s “particularly enlightening and full of information a lot of people don’t know.”
So that’s a good enough excuse for me to talk about it. Also, did I mention that the video is hilarious?
A Voice for Men’s grandly titled First International Conference on Men’s Issues wound down a week ago. But the drama continues.
Today, in a post on AVFM, maximum leader Paul Elam set forth a series of accusations against the Doubletree Fort Shelby Hotel (where the conference was originally going to be held); against an unnamed security contracting company in Houston; and even against some hypothetical “privileged little college girls” who might have had the conference booted from the Doubletree by simply making a couple of irate phone calls, because, at least in Elam’s imagination, “privileged little college girls” have that power.
But the bulk of Elam’s complaints lie with the Doubletree, as the typically understated title of his post makes clear:
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.