Dylann Storm Roof’s Facebook profile picture; the patches on his jacket depict the flags of Rhodesia and apartheid-era South Africa
Less than 24 hours after an apparent white supremacist murdered nine black churchgoers in cold blood during a prayer meeting in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, one prominent MRA is trying to put the blame on feminism, because of a remark the killer reportedly made about rape.
One of the survivors of the church killings reported that, before he began shooting, the killer told those in the prayer group that “you rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”
Harry Kopyto, the disbarred lawyer hero #GamerGate deserves?
Do you remember that alleged case the Honey Badger Brigade was allegedly planning to bring against the Calgary Expo?
In case your memory needs refreshing: the Honey Badgers — a mostly female antifeminist “brigade” closely associated with A Voice for Men — were tossed out of the Expo earlier this year after they showed up flying the banner of GamerGate. The Badgers threatened to sue, and somehow managed to raise a little over $30,000 to pay for their possible legal expenses.
Then they went silent on the whole suit thing for a looong time.
Today they announced (archived here) that they’d hired a fellow named Harry Kopyto as their “legal council” [sic], paying him a retainer of $3500. As one of the Badgers — apparently head Badger Alison Tieman — explained on their web page:
Today’s lesson in Men’s Rights pseudoscience comes from a regular contributor to A Voice for Men named Stephen Jarosek, who also goes by the name “Codebuster.” The “code” he has “busted” this time? The code of the Seekret Matriarchy That Runs the World. And he’s busted it with … SCIENCE! (Or at least a very, very rough approximation of it.)
Put on your wrong-thinking caps, because Codebuster is going to get all technical here! He starts off his essay with a lengthy discussion of sciencey stuff that includes sentences like these:
A mug shot of James Boulware from a previous arrest
Last night, as you probably have heard, a Dallas man named James Boulware launched a one-man quasi-military assault on the Dallas Police Department headquarters, firing an automatic rife with such abandon that early reports suggested that there were as many as four different shooters. After fleeing the scene in an armored “Zombie Apocalypse Van,” leaving behind an assortment of improvised explosives as a kind of going away gift, Boulware was cornered in a restaurant parking lot; after a long standoff, he was eventually killed by a police sniper’s bullet. It was something of a miracle that no one but Boulware ended up dead.
Boulware’s father told local news that his son had been “pushed past” his “breaking point” after losing custody of his son. Men’s Rights activists often describe men who “resort to violence” after losing a custody dispute as victims of a cruel family court system.
But in Boulware’s case, it appears, nothing could be further from the truth.
Never let it be said that the Men’s Rights movement does nothing to help men. Earlier this week, A Voice for Men’s CEO Paul Elam announced the launch of a new service for men. That service is that Elam, a noted former psychology major in college, will listen to you talk shit about women for an hour over Skype for $90.
Elam’s fans are excited to have a new talking point.
Starting your own country on an island? Simpsons did it. (But with girls.)
Over on A Voice for Men, a Man Going His Own Way named Frank Worley has unveiled a most immodest proposal: turning Puerto Rico, or at least a giant chunk of it, into a MGTOW nation. Yes, he’s serious. Also, an idiot.
As Worley sees it,
Women have used democracy to pressure our gutless politicians into surrendering our constitution, personal liberty and any semblance of due process. … Nothing male is sacred or protected.
Don’t tell ME to express my feelings! RAAAAAARRGHHHH!!1!!
Above, the unintentionally ironic MRA meme of the week, courtesy of A Voice for Men’s Facebook page, their main distribution center for unintentionally ironic and otherwise terrible memes. I’m not sure what specific week this is the ironic meme for, given that Emma Watson’s speech to the UN took place last September and this meme was posted on Facebook only this week, but just roll with it, people!
So what exactly makes this meme ironic? Well, for starters, Watson didn’t actually say the words in question or otherwise order men to talk to women about their feelings.
ProTip: If you’re ever tempted to start a cult, play this video game instead, and leave real people alone.
I sometimes refer to A Voice for Men, the Men’s Rights hate site that has evolved into something of a hate group, as a cult. Up until now I’ve only done so half-seriously; while there are a lot of things about AVFM that are cultish, from the apocalyptic rhetoric to the constant demands for money to the organized harassment of its critics, it seems to lack some of the central elements of a real cult.
I mean, they’re not holed up in a compound in Idaho; they don’t wear funny uniforms; and they don’t talk, at least not publicly, about their single-minded dedication to serving the group’s leader — one Paul Elam of Houston Texas.
Even though I run a blog with the deliberately ironic title “We Hunted the Mammoth,” I’m still regularly amazed by how eager men who’ve accomplished nothing of value in their entire lives are to claim a kind of vicarious credit, by virtue of being men, for everything good that we humans have accomplished here on planet earth.
Consider this astoundingly un-self-aware bit of almost literal we-hunted-the-mammothing from a recent A Voice for Men post, written (very, very badly) by Peter Wright and Paul Elam:
