I was sent this choice quote from Paul Elam [He denies it is his; evidence suggests that the quote below is a forgery], the ignoramus who runs A Voice for Men, and it stunned me into silence. So much wrong. So painful. Such unscientific nonsense.
The reason women do not suffer the burden of anxiety when it comes to mate finding is because we, as a species, rely almost entirely on Intersexual selection these days (also known as ‘female choice’). In other words, a woman will always have men fawning upon her in the hope that they will be granted an opportunity to pass on their seed. You only have to observe the beta White Knights over in the feminism corner to see this in action.
It is much more common in the animal kingdom to see Intrasexual selection, where it is the alpha-male who beats off all competition and then chooses his mate. Such a system is inherently better, as it removes the possibility for genetic regression. In today’s society. women are never held to account over who they choose to breed with, and as more often than not it seems they are intent on passing on the Jackass-gene. This isn’t an argument in favor of rape, Intrasexual selection isn’t really rape at all, and evolution is driven by it in most other species. Mallards reproduce almost exclusively by gang-intrasexual selection.
Aargh. Naturalistic fallacy. Misrepresentation of animal mating strategies (they’re more complex than this cartoon). Fallacies about genes. Internal contradictions (how would favoring “alpha males” reduce the selection for the “jackass-gene”?). Sexual reproduction without female choice really is rape. Why would giving men total control prevent “genetic regression”, while giving women total control would cause it? It was so godawful bad I’m finding it hard to respond with complete sentences.
So instead, just go read this article on the myth of the alpha male. It’s far messier than the writer wants it to be.
Because the word “alpha” so often conjures images of dominance and aggression, the door is open to these and other examples, like that of the Japanese quail. Dominant males of this species are incredibly aggressive with females they’re courting, female Japanese quails show a strong preference for subordinate males. In her book The Nature of Human Nature, Carin Bondar describes an experiment designed to understand Japanese quail mate selection: “researchers had a female witness a fight between two males. Once the fight was over and a clearly defined winner and loser had been determined, the female was allowed into the fight arena to select her partner.” The females overwhelmingly chose the loser of the fight.
“The loser males may not have access to the resources that the winners do, but they are not as aggressive toward their female partners,” Bondar writes. “The females prefer to mate with less aggressive males in order to protect themselves from courtship abuse by dominant males.”
Other myths that should probably be expunged from the writer’s feeble brain: no, cavemen did not club their potential mates unconscious and drag them by their hair to their cave. Most women do not find you sexy if you catcall them in the street. Drinking watery beer will not make bikini-clad women flock to your side. You are not a duck, and we would not like living in a society ruled by the sexual mores of mallards.
Damn straight. Small town America has a great tradition of greeting European women with African husbands and their mixed children with open arms and total inclusiveness. /dripping sarcasm
I witnessed that mallard gang rape once. Those male ducks were really nasty and aggressive. At the time I didn’t know that it was the way they did things. It was disturbing to watch what they did to the female duck.
And I thought it was the smart kids who ran the projector. They really can’t grasp the concept of treating women like people because it’s the right thing to do, rather than because we’re expecting sex as a reward, simply because that’s how THEY operate.
Well, Mr. Elam, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck…
Umm. So these so-called ‘jackasses’ get to breed, which is the definition of Alpha, apparently. By Elam-logic then, the characteristics, whatever the hell they are, which make one a ‘jackass,’ are the true Alpha-characteristics, right?
So many idiots … so few facepalms (before brain damage sets in)!
So we can relegate the whole duck dynasty to the role of Faux Newz pontificating pontiffs?
What a sad, warped, and oh-so-familiar weltgeist these insecure and scared specimens of humanity have. They have achieved a level of ‘everyone is wrong but me!’ that, were it not so culturally accepted, would be fucking hilarious. But, so many Americans, men and women, adults and children, would, if one phrased it more delicately, wholeheartedly agree with the idea that women should have not right to bodily autonomy, no right to say no, no right to be full humans.
At one time I would have objected to the idea that drinking watered down beer would NOT cause bikini-clad women to surround me, but that was when I realized that I was only drinking it on the beach, during spring break in the south.
Sorry, I stopped here. I’ll try to read further once I recalibrate my o-rly?-meter.
women are never held to account over who they choose to breed with, and as more often than not it seems they are intent on passing on the Jackass-gene.
Then we know who to blame for you, don’t we?*
________________________________________________________
* Yes, I know that the premise is horribly flawed, but it’s interesting that he didn’t/couldn’t work out the logic of his own assertion.
Is anyone else having trouble redeeming their ‘woman’ coupon? I input my details, but my fawning hareem hasn’t turned up yet. I think there might have been a mix up at the depot because I have more crispy peking duck than I can possibly manage.
Please send help soon, as I have run out of the little pancakes.
the mating call of the black-biled mysogynist is unmistakable: “waaaaah!!! why won’t any of these b*tches f*ck me???!!!”
That’s right! It is only the man, blamed for choosing the wrong uh mother of his children. The woman is always glorified for “picking the right man”, while men are the only ones berated for “marrying that slut, for your wife”.
[ugh] I think that Conserve Christian Marriage Recommendations, is leaking out my fingers now: Don’t marry a sexy dresser, if a woman dresses sexy; she will not be faithful to you alone. (she’s a slut for dressing sexy)
Back OT: I don’t get the ‘Intra-‘ vs ‘Inter-‘ use of those prefixes. What does Intersexual and Intrasexual really mean? Me dumbfounded.
A former hoch-Aryan colleague—who retired one step ahead of a truckload of student grievances—once sidled up to a woman in his department and informed her, “You’re not someone I would have ever picked to be the mother of my children.” (She was apparently too small and brown.) She bared her teeth in a big grin that conveyed something other than cheer and replied, “Whatever made you think it would have been your choice?”
He was reportedly taken aback by her lack of respect.
Whatever it takes to tire them out, I suppose.
Why does this only ever seem to be applied to sex?
Clearly the most efficient food-gathering strategy is to dive down and catch fish with one’s mouth. This may be supplemented by crowding around anyone anyone who shows up with a loaf of bread, and begging for scraps.
While we’re at it, flapping one’s arms vigorously and taking to the air is the best way to travel.
Or we could admit that we are, quite literally, not fucking ducks.
nothing more traditionally wholesome, fun and manly than beating off the competition.
“Intersexual selection these days (also known as ‘female choice’). … Intrasexual selection, where it is the alpha-male who beats off all competition and then chooses his mate…”
No, intersexual selection is not the same as “female choice” – the choice can go both ways. And Intrasexual selection is not always a state of male-on-male competition; sometimes females compete as well.
also kudos to comment @12, aarrgghh. excellent.
I saw “Duck Morality.” Since I had recently watched Angry Joe declare the Duck Dynasty video game the worst game of 2014, I had them on my mind. So I was expecting the post to be about a wingnut talking point or something expressed on the show.
Then I saw “A Voice for Men” and I knew it’d be someone attempting to justify rape because it’s ubiquitous in the duck world. Sorry, I’d rather sex not involve an arms race between me and my partner’s equipment.
He hates women because he wants them so much.
How could he fail to realize that he should change his strategy and not berate half of humanity for his own mistake?
I’m sitting here puzzling over the MRAs use of biological arguments: if they want lots of sex, presumably their strategy is to be followed around by an army of their genetic legacy. Why then is copulation what’s interesting to them? We all know that’s part of success but it’s not the end-game, an army of successful offspring is. Can’t they draw the real lesson from the mallards, namely that copulation isn’t “fun” for anyone involved and shouldn’t be their objective at all? If your purpose is to go on a hike you shouldn’t get obssessed about the color of your socks.
The negative attitude towards women exhibited by some men (in the West) are a consequence of Christianity. Particularly the belief (primarily attributed to St Augustine) that “woman” (the temptress) was responsible for “original sin” & man’s downfall. Women were reviled by the Church fathers. I’d imagine that such attitudes still leave their traces in our culture.
The other Abrahamic religions are also similarly misogynistic. The sooner we’re done with them the better.
No rational, sapient being should want to live in a society which bases its morality on fucking Mallards.
[…]
The willful ignorance is breathtaking.
In seahorses, the males carry the “pregnancy”. What? It’s just as relevant as the shite he cited…
I’m always amazed by two things with these people, the first one is just how incredibly little they know about the natural world and it’s surreal diversity, they only ever reference the most superficial (and wrong), kid-level stuff like yeah, lion prides, and gorillas, dominance, man, yeah! Completely oblivious to the fact that the most successful lion prides are dominated by a coallition of males that frequently engage in sexual activity to reinforce their bond, or that bonobos exist at all. Hey, my newts just leave a packet of sperm on the floor and try to lure a female to walk over it, why don’t you give that a try, Paul? If you are going to make a naturalistic fallacy, you should at the very least, know a fucking thing about nature. For fuck’s shakes….ducks….does he even know that there are animals he’s never seen in a farm or at a zoo?
The other remarkable thing about these people is the mindboggling narcissism. They are always alphas…they are always the perfect sexual partner that all women should obviously desire, but they don’t, and that’s their fault because they are stupid and can’t be trusted to make the right choice, a.k.a him, so choice must be removed so that the obvious perfect specimen gets to pass on his perfect seed. It’s beyond pathetic…
Guess what, Paul, i don’t think Brad Pitt is an MRA…
Some “ducky” comic relief…
M R DUCS.
M R NT DUCS!
S M R. C M BILS?
L IL B! M R DUCS!
Is Paul Elam ‘ducking’ the REAL issue here? Or is he just another ‘quack’?
@dick,
given how many atheists express the same ideas (thunderf00l, for one), merely fighting religion is not nearly enough. these ideas may have deep roots in these religions, but they have spread and set down roots elsewhere, too.
What puzzles me the most about the Men’s Rights Movement is how they very obviously fail to live up to their own twisted standards without being aware of it. They campaign for the re-imposition of traditional gender roles in which the man is strong, dominant and stoic; yet, they spend their entire time whining in a most “unmanly” way (by their own definition of what it is to be a man!) at how modern society has somehow robbed them of their rights. By behaving as they do, they come across as the very “beta males” they purport to despise!
Sadly, they seem not to have much in the way of self-awareness as they surely would’ve vanished in a puff of logic before now if they did…
Also, according to Wikipedia, male mallards have been observed copulating with other male mallards… other dead male mallards. I think a society based on mallard sexual mores would resemble that of The Affront from Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels…
So, this guy found that “scientifically accurate DuckTales” video on YouTube and thought it sounded like some sort of pro-PUA propaganda, then. What next? Lucky dimes and money bins?
It’s willful but it’s not ignorant: that asshole Elam knew exactly what he meant writing that. I can imagine him sniggering as he wrote it too. What a pitiable excuse for a human being.
Kichae: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k01DIVDJlY
“women are never held to account over who they choose to breed with, and as more often than not it seems they are intent on passing on the Jackass-gene.”
Well, anecdotally, Elam is correct in terms of his mother and the mothers of other MRAs. Also, MRAs spend so much time whining about how they can’t get women to date them; I don’t see them faring any better in an “alpha-male” dominated system, but at least they’d all get “beat off.”
Given the trouble the MRAs have dealing with real women, versus the fantasies running around in their heads, I hate to think how some of them deal with their children, instead of the fantasy children in their heads. Of course Mrs. MRA is supposed to deal with all the hard work of raising babies and small children.
congaboy wrote
but they’re totally alphas, and everyone would see it if only the beta white knights weren’t always beating them down in order to impress the women, er, feminists they want to mate with.
… it really is amazing how their nightmare scenario can be phased exactly the same as their ideal one with just a few labels transposed.
Cat Mara:
They campaign for the re-imposition of traditional gender roles in which the man is strong, dominant and stoic
Full stop, right there. If they actually were strong, dominant, and stoic, they wouldn’t be “campaigning” for anything – they’d be giving orders to their submissive minions, from their comfortable perch on their throne made of SJW bloggers’ skulls. Basically these guys have fantasies of being Conan the Barbarian but are actually more like Aeron chair wannabees.*
(* my Aeron chair is really comfortable; the skull-throne always smelled kind of rank in the summer when the humidity was up)
Apparently rather than let women choose to pass on the jack-ass gene, the men should be allowed to fight over the women and then force her to pass on the jack-ass gene.
Yep, no lonely women around.
Never seen any, never known any, never been one. We just bat our eyelashes and we have a bunch of guys who’ll happily father our children.
Also, of course, no negative consequences for having made a bad choice with the, ehm, sperm donors. Raising a kid or three alone on just your income or welfare because the fucker left and doesn’t give a damn is all sunshine and unicorn poop.
No negative stereotypes about a women who have children from different men, but damn, have you ever heard what they say about guys who have 2 kids with 2 women and don’t live with either woman?
ck @#27, yes. I said that the misogyny has permeated society. It’ll take time to get rid of it. Of course, teaching philosophy in schools would speed things up.
Doesn’t Elam know that the “True Facts About [Whatever]” video series are not serious?
What?! It’s not even Spring time and already we’re being forced to get ready for Dead Duck Day!
http://www.improbable.com/2010/06/04/dead-duck-day-june-5/
This ever expanding run in to DDD is taking all the magic out of this mst celebrated day. Will no one think of the children?
goddamnit numerobis now I’ve been watching “true facts” videos for hours and giggling maddly >(
Marcus Ranum @35:
Conan? Nah, Conan’s too energetic for these guys: after all, he had to go out, find and break into the temple of some nameless god and murder lots of cultists before he could rescue the suitably grateful metal-bikini-wearing wench. Way too much work. I reckon they’re more into “Gor” where metal-bikini-wearing wenches apparently come free in boxes of breakfast cereal.
Here’s some more mallard for you Paul. http://www.hetnatuurhistorisch.nl/fileadmin/user_upload/documents-nmr/Publicaties/Deinsea/Deinsea_08/Deinsea_8_15_Moeliker_.pdf
Also, could MRAs please decide whether women are just fucking about everybody instead of all those wonderful Alpha-males or whether women are artificially inflating the pussy price (my favourite expression ever) so normal guys are dropping out of the race because women just got too choosy (would you believe that nowadays guys have to wipe their own asses? Misandry I tell you, Misandry!!!)
So, logically — if he thinks the same as a duck, he’s made of wood, and therefore, a witch! Burn him!
After reading that I am really, really reminded of the whining posts I see regularly on Fetlife, and I suppose probably any other social network as well. There are always posts and comments by guys that are really bitter and angry that women will not reply to them, they think they are great, that they deserve replies and the only reason they do not get them is because women are terrible and unjust. These guys, and MRAs both seem to be utterly unable to understand that it is not some outside person that makes them undesirable, but themselves.
I’m going to quote Daz, who said exactly what I always think about this kind of shit:
Because whining about how women don’t want you is super stoic. I’m guessing they are about as strong and dominant as they are stoic. I guess that’s all difficult to see when you have your head that far up your own ass.
I had trouble finishing that. It was so clear – calling feminist men Betas, implying that he’s an Alpha, implying that he’d like to beat off “lesser men” to impose his will on a woman and “pass on his seed.”
It’s gone beyond objectification, it’s become a machine.
Also, since I heard about these less-than-savory aspects of the love-lives of ducks, I can’t help but imagine that the excited quacking one hears in the park when people are feeding them bread is just duck bro-speak:
“Oh, yeah, more bread, bitch. Yeah, you like it when I eat the bread, huh?”
“Fucking bread. Fucking whore. FUCKING BREAD WHORE”
So basically: “The woman has no choice in it, but it isn’t rape, because it is NATURAL and it is objectively better since now the man is choosing the mate and not those silly, foolish women”
There are not words strong enough to express my contempt for this sorry excuse for a human being. His deflection about this not being apologetics for “rape” is the thinnest and flimsiest of fig leaves: He is using the most inane excuses he can scrounge up in order to say that women should not have the right to consent to sex. Fucking disgusting enough, without the faint scent of Eugenics also wafting in the breeze.
Zimmerle
He’s an Alpha, goddammit: “lesser men” would beat HIM off, thank you very much.
A little bit of biological knowledge is a dangerous thing…
“Elam” = “male” backwards. Food for thought.
Sigh. I once spent a weekend camped in the desert, doing volunteer work for a state park, with an assigned partner who believed the whole concept of marriage is forced on men by women. The natural state, “The way it works with all other animals”, is for the woman to take in a male on a short term basis, fully supporting him. Until she becomes pregnant, at which time she puts the male out and raises the child, alone. And the male can then wander off to find another mate/ meal ticket.
He had many other similar philosophies on life. He also drank quite a lot.
hey does anyone actually know guys like this (just seen post 54, apparently yes)? I have a difficult time taking such stuff seriously, you don’t think he’s just trying to get you all riled up with such drivel? As well as the seahorses (azhael #25), try the midwife toad for male help. And as for the mallard ducks, look at swans – monogamy and equally shared duties if ever there was.
this mr elam is just stupid
though when ever I see his name mentioned I think of this guy all together a different kind thinker I imagine (hope)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001181/?ref_=nv_sr_1
uncle frogy
@54, I wonder if he’d like to emulate the animals where after mating, the male dies since he’s served his purpose.
photoreceptor,
There are entire websites, blogging networks and online communities dedicated to teh MRA movement to which Paul Elam is one of the most visible members and leaders. Yes, this real. No this is not some elaborate joke or attempt at trolling.
Please don’t make this thread all about you barging in into a topic you obviously have no prior knowledge of and make it about you being needed to be eductaed on the basics.
Good grief, did this wingnut really just proffer an argument against romantic relationships and women selecting their own partners? Out of a sense of sick fascination I can’t help but wonder what the mechanism he’d offer instead would be. Perhaps a tribunal of wise elders (men) leafing through catalogues of handsome studs? A lottery for sexual rights to each women that can be entered after you win some sort of Gladiator style pit battle?
It’s amazing how alpha male behaviour tends to be whatever the alpha wannabe deems. For some it’s playing video games, for others it’s lifting weights, and for some it’s buying funny hats for your fake skulls.
@57 Or get his head bitten off, and canabalised by the female after doing the deed.
How dare he besmirch the good name of Elam.
See, he hasn’t understood them either.
Male-male competition, female-female competition, male choice and female choice all exist and are nontrivially common, and there are many species that practice two or more of these.
The implications, the implications. *dramatically averts head and eyes*
Paul Cowan @59
The true Alpha Male just presents himself and all others recognize his innate studliness. It’s like a peacock displaying his tail (except, of course, for the lack of tail on the Alpha Male).
Elam really has no clue how pathetic he is. The scary thing is that so many listen to him.
Why the ducks? Why not the phalaropes? How about the anglerfish?
I do think he falls into self-parody with “gang intrasexual selection”. I mean, if you use the word where most people would use “rape”, you don’t have a case for claiming rape is not what you meant.
Giliell:
Yes, of course we do, it’s all about the babies. :eyeroll: I find it interesting that these arseholes always attempt to frame their rape fantasies around siring children. A lot of people don’t want children, including lots of women *gasp*, and those who are childfree are more than happy to leave the child having to those who want them. I’ve brought this up to MRAs before, and it always leaves them befuddled for a bit, before they regroup and holler that it’s childfree bitches who are the very worst of the worst.
photoreceptor @ 55:
Unfortunately, yes. Look up A Voice for Men, and you too can know guys like this. If you don’t want to provide clicks for them, I suggest doing some reading at We Hunted the Mammoth, where you’ll learn much more than you’ll want.
Oh, and if you meant if anyone here knows men like this afk*? Yes. They are all over the place.
*Away from keyboard.
“the lack of a tail on the alpha male”
Sounds as though that line is just begging to be a poem – a thoroughly derisory one.
I work outside at a marina so every year around mating season I have to witness the ducks engaging in ‘gang-intrasexual selection’. It’s horrifying. If they’re caught in the water a female duck can actually drown from all the males piling on her.
I’ll never understand how anyone could be so twisted and awful that they think that’s how humans should behave.
I suggest we tell the person who wrote this about angler fish reproduction then smile sweetly at him while holding a scalpel and surgical suture material…
Dianne, it’s a misandry fish!
Paul Elam:
*SNORT*
Well, that’s one way to be first in line.
*SNICKER*
OK, this guy knows almost nothing about mallards, let alone anything else.
Mallards don’t have “alpha” and “beta” males, because they don’t have a dominance hierarchy for access to females. In captivity they develop a dominance hierarchy for access to food, but AFAIK it’s still every drake for himself when it comes to courtship.
The biggest/strongest/toughest mallard males are actively chosen by the females, and each of those males is more-or-less monogamous with his female. She tests his bigstrongtoughness with an “incitement display,” which is basically her pointing out other males and saying “go kick his ass to prove you’re a man.” If he doesn’t fight and win, she leaves him.
The unsuccessful males, who can’t get a mate, are the ones that do most of the gang-raping. Forced copulation attempts lead to less average reproductive success than having a female choose you-the-male, because a) female mallards have behavioral and anatomical adaptations to avoid getting fertilized against their will, b) you’re competing with other rapist-males at the same time, and c) many females are being guarded by their chosen male.
So if you were dumb enough to try to draw lessons for humans from mallard duck behavior in the first place, it should be something like “Loser males rape, while awesome males constantly bust their asses to keep their one special lady impressed, and guard her from roving bands of rapists.” That probably fits some human’s model of romance–Edgar Rice Burroughs, possibly–but not Elam’s.
More generally, intersexual selection is the norm in almost all species, because females are choosy. And because females can usually do something to partially obstruct males who try to force a copulation, it’s usually more effective to win a willing female partner if the male can do so. IOW, Elam’s completely wrong when he says that the “best” males get to force themselves on females; it’s usually the “crappy” males that are doing that, as a backup reproductive strategy. Even in a species like elephant seals, where the big males are kicking the crap out of each other to own a chunk of the beach, it turns out that a lot of the females on that beach got pregnant before they even arrived–meeting other males out in the ocean, by choice.
albeit for a very short time, I should add. Once the female’s laid her eggs, the male wanders off to try again. And mallard couples don’t stay together from year to year.
I was under the impression that a lot of MRA’s are self-confessed “beta” males. My mistake, or what?
To paraphrase the old chestnut: the Douche can cite Nature for his own Purpose.
Obviously, extremely dominant behaviour like pack-rape is not universal in nature, but it’s telling (and, unsurprisingly, creepy as fuck) that Elam went straight there and didn’t even glance sideways at the comparatively chilled alpha-bro elephant seal or the polyamorous bonobo. Of course he wouldn’t even look at the many species of bird which pair for life and/or share nesting/rearing duties while their partner goes off to eat; bollocksed if he’d give the time of day to the various species of spider whose males exist solely to inseminate females and then be eaten (the picture of efficiency IMHO). Seahorses, whose males give birth? Total betas. He didn’t even mention our closest primate relatives. Nope – he went straight to fucking ducks.
In Elam’s tiny, stunted, pathetic, frightened little universe there’s no smorgasbord of sexual behaviour in the animal kingdom; there’s only what Elam feverishly turns into flip-cartoons on his Post-It pads and whatever rough correlations he can find on the NatGeo channel.
What a stunning dunderhead. Stupid, sexist, AND ignorant. A real keeper.
Animal mating practices are incredibly various, and not always what they seem to be. A little story here:
Remember the epitome of the alpha-male, the buck with the enormous rack of antlers who fights the other would-be alpha-males, then triumphantly impregnates his whole harem? Well, when researchers actually observed the whole procedure, they found that while the alpha-male were goring each other and giving themselves headaches, the wimpy “beta-bucks” were sneaking around and impregnating the willing members of the harem, who, rather than being impressed by the alpha males, seemed pretty bored. Amused biologists call this the “sneaky fucker” strategy.
Hairhead
That ‘sneaky’ business was also reported by primatologists 40mumble years ago.
Hairhead @77: My understanding is that there’s a similar pattern in baboon troupes: While the alphas and would-be alphas are duking it out, some of the lower-ranking male baboons go hang out with the female baboons, grooming, forming bonds, and sometimes sneaking off for a quicky.
And male Seahorses have another role again, ditto Hyenas. Praying Mantis sex is notoriously problematic for the MRA crowd. I fail to see how any of this Dr Doolittle bullshit is at all relevant to this horny misanthrope’s horrible argument that consent to procreate should be removed from half of the species.
@Hairhead etc
Some species of fish as well. Sneaky fuckery abounds.
#80 Paul Cowan: ” Praying Mantis sex is notoriously problematic for the MRA crowd.”
There’s a great deal of myth around praying mantis sex. In the wild, the male usually survives by doing an elaborate dance while he approaches the female, if possible while she’s already eating :).
Most documentaries find it easier to put a female in a small aquarium, then drop a male on top of her. Giving him just enough time to scream “OH SHI “!
#82 weatherwax
Even better, rather than decapitation and consumption you have to learn to dance your ass off. This was pretty much my understanding of how to attract a girlfriend in the eighties.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who saw the “additional meaning” of the phrase “Beat off.” Of course, Mr. Elam fails to realize what he just offered all his “competitors.” Priceless.
Iyeska
Oh, I know this one, I know this one!
It’s the evil feminism that confused you.
Without feminism, nobody of any importance, i.e. somebody born with a penis*, would have even thought that you should have any choice in that whatsoever.
Because let’s face it, that’s what they actually want to get back to: guaranteed pussy for every man who can afford it, complete with jaintor, cook, childproducer and childrearer.
+++
Yep, it’s quite telling that they usually:
A) Don’t understand much of animal behaviour anyway
B) Are very choosy about which animal they’re looking at. (Why ducks but not eagles where the female is about 1/3 taller than the male? Why ducks where the male is usually much brighter than the female?)
C) Think that looking at animals is any good when your study subject is humans and your question is “what would be beneficial for human society?”
*Because let’s not kid ourselves: for these people biology = destiny
I almost wonder what Elam would make of the matriarchies of bees, elephants, bonobos, killer whales, and lions. And also meerkats, and hyenas, and so many others…
…what do you suppose it is we’re responding to here?
@87 Azkyroth
I can see you have a problem with my comment but i fail to see what it is. Could you enlighten me?
If the issue is that i’m mocking his extremely selective view of what happens in nature in order to make the most ridiculous naturalistic fallacy, i don’t see how that’s a problem…If the issue is just that i snarkily suggested he’d take up leaving spermatophores on the floor, rather than trying to rape people, all i can say is i wasn’t trying to be humorous about it…
More and more of them are being found cheating, BTW.
Who is this Paul Elam person again…
is this him?
@88 azhael
I read that previous comment as saying that the Paul Elam article itself is the pile of sperm that Paul’s left to try and get women to walk over. Which I think is amusing and clever, so thank you both for it – even if that’s accidental.
you know why the appeal to nature so often fails?
because the people doing it so rarely have a clue what the reality is.
in fact, cuckoldry is common in swans. What’s more, from memory, EVERY monogamous bird species so far carefully examined has shown varying levels of mate swapping.
the more you know…
swan swingers…
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/swan-rakes/2007/04/10/1175971098054.html
Ichthyic:
Subset of which is: There is a vast array of animal behavior in nature. To say that there is one set of endorsed natural behavior is ignorance at best, dishonest cherry picking at worst. (I suspect the latter in Elam’s case).
One thing I find really striking about Elam is what a failure he is. He isn’t succeeding on his own terms (he’s no alpha) and he’s certainly a failure in terms of being a decent human being. What’s his point? Does he really think that he’d be an alpha in his ideal “intrasexual selection” world? Not likely, dude.
dianne: It kind of reminds me of people who speak vigorously and forcefully about the merits of the Wealthy and of big business and vote Republican, yet they are actually poor. Somehow they imagine that they are a part of that tribe though, or will be some day, but it doesn’t really mesh with reality at all. They are willing to screw over many people, including themselves, because they consider themselves to far more important than they actually are and view their actual peers as inferiors worthy of mistreatment and contempt.
anteprepro
The American Dream™
#66 Iyeska: “Yes, of course we do, it’s all about the babies. :eyeroll: I find it interesting that these arseholes always attempt to frame their rape fantasies around siring children.”
Especially since they’re prone to accuse women of deliberately getting pregnant to “enslave” men into paying child support. Even accusing women of “sperm jacking” to impregnate themselves.
“no, cavemen did not club their potential mates unconscious and drag them by their hair to their cave”
Except in Texas. Just have a look at Tex Avery’s “The First Bad Man” for the real story of prehistoric marriage.
That “caveman” stereotype is a result of preservation bias — where was the best preservation of the remains and technologies of our Paleolithic ancestors and relatives? There aren’t enough caves to go around, and many of our ancestors lived in places with very few or no caves. There is also evidence of mammoth-bone huts in Ukraine from some 15,000 years ago — a rare survival of the homes that many of our ancestors/relatives had created for themselves.
One may get a hint as to how our ancestors got together from various “primitive” peoples that various explorers had encountered. Some of them seemed lacking in the marriage department to some explorers, with marriage mainly what we’d call “living together”.
However, there have likely been less pleasant activities, like men killing men in neighboring villages and marching off women. That’s much more plausible than clubbing them and dragging them by the hair. Even carrying them off is more practical than that.
Doofus has clearly never had a heterosexual teenaged girl (or older, but the teenager is what I’m dealing with right now) moaning around the house how no one will everrrrrrrr love her and she’ll neverrrrr get a boyfriend and she’ll be alone foreverrrrr.
@anteprepro 94
I’m guessing it’s both.
The most stupid thing about this whole “alpha” BS is that even the bloody erotic fiction, and/or novels which include werewolves, of one sort or other, don’t fall for this stupid BS. And, in the few cases where “some” of them do act that way, their carriers as scary alpha monsters end… badly.
To these authors, alpha means the strength to protect the pack. ALL of the pack, including/especially the women.
To people like Elam, it means being the rogue that sneaks around the edges of the pack, won’t join it, tries poaching the females, and general gets eaten, or at least killed, at some point in the book. If they actually do manage to end up leading a pack, there is a good change the whole damn pack ends up dead by the end of the book.
No sane people, or sane werewolves, for that matter, would buy this BS. lol
That is amazing I never knew females preferred subordinate males. However, I never thought the alpha male fighting/sparring for female attention was really the male choosing, I always thought of it as the opposite: they do it to prove themselves to the females so they will consent to mate. i.e. I thought of it as they are not so much dominating males and showing off for females. But I am in no way an expert I just read things that interest me. I have read some birds have “tournament” -like sparring where many male birds are involved, which immediately brings to mind football and other sports, which I find fascinating.
I meant “not dominating males as much as showing off for females” not “and”
Huh. Men’s rights, eh? I find it fascinating–not really–that someone looking to improve men’s well being and rights in society would think that a system in which men are physically assaulted and beaten is a better system than one where they may be expected to be nice to women in order to mate. The is what is wrong with MRAs. It’s not about men’s well being. It’s about subjugating women. It’s better to see women as a prize than an active participant, so much better that we’ll so clearly hurt men in the process. *spits*
Of course, the whole thing is ridiculously inaccurate anyway. As an introverted, socially awkward teen, I had as much anxiety over my relationship possibilities as similarly socially awkward teen boys. Also coupled with a heaping amount of body issues. It seems like the fantasy is always the opposite of what Elam suggests. Males want to have their harem of fawning women (who are also servants, of course), and rich males like to project that they’ve fulfilled this fantasy. A rich female publicly showing her fawning harem of attractive men would be sl*t shamed and criticized for having multiple partners and being open about her sexuality in that way.
toska
Well, one more point on the ‘it’s really about hating women’ column. I mean, looking at Paul Elam, he’s not exactly a Schwatzeneggeresque mountain of muscle there; AFAICT, in his world where men beat the shit out of each other in order to get control of women, guys like Paul Elam would get the shit kicked out of them on a regular basis by other men, and still wouldn’t be able to get near women. It reminds me a lot of the libertarians who are utterly convinced that if it weren’t for the evil government and all the damn
non whitesmoochers claiming they have rights and everything, they would inevitably be wealthy captains of industry. (Indeed, there is considerable overlap in these two groups)and each other.
Shorter Elam:
“When women are allowed to decide who they fuck, they fuck men who treat them like human beings and who may actually care about them as something other than a sex dispenser. This is bad. Those men are bad because they make the inferior sex dispensers think they’re people. Women should not get to choose those men. Women should dispenses the sexes to real men. Men like me. I tell women when they dispense the sexes and who get’s their sexes! Nothing rapey about that. Nope. ”
*Baucman coke stare*
He’s using bad science to replace a god to tell us that patriarchy is the best. I see that an awful lot, y’all.
That’s some moment for men’s rights he’s promoting there.
Even shorter Elam:
“This sexual revolution and civil rights movements thing doesn’t seem to be working out for me. They need to go.”
And then, at least with birds, but.. probably any other species that could get by with doing it, if it was possible, the female, having found a male that was the best “parent/protector”, immediately runs off and bangs 3-4 others, who didn’t make the “alpha male” cut. lol
Seriously, aggression and strength are somewhat useful traits, as are likely a lot of other factors which go into the whole mating dance, but, there is a weird conflict even among humans – humans “tend” to pick mates who have strong genetic similarities to themselves, presumably because this is more likely to result in a stable genome?, but also to avoid individuals who have clear flaws (preferring symmetry, etc., which tend to be a sign that both sets of genes in the body are stable, where as, if some of the active genes do something odd… they produce asymmetries. However, there is also the “new genetics” issue, i.e., mutations that might actually be useful, but, by definition, do not fall into the “same as me, so probably stable” category. We know there is a draw to similarity, and away from obvious health issues, due to genetic comparison among couples. But, I have to wonder… is there also a drive to, once one has established a partner who is genetically stable, and compatible genetically, to then seek diversity, as a means to introduce possible external traits, not shared by the pair?
It would explain why birds cheat. And, most any other species, including humans, who have mated outside of the “pairing” they would have otherwise formed.
The whole alpha male things presupposes things that are just not correct – that defeating the enemy, and getting the girl, necessarily means your the one that ends up in her bed. It presumes that strength is the key factor, when it just isn’t, at all, instead of genetic compatibility, which may mean you lose because you are all macho, and that **isn’t** compatible with the genetics of the female you are pursuing. And so on. You might have been picked, ironically, because you have the money, the strength, etc. to provide, but then find yourself, after the fact, never so much as even sleeping in the same bed with them (and, depending how clueless the dimwit in question is, maybe not even getting that you sort of need to do that once in a while, to end up with kids.. Yeah, there are, truly, people this stupid, who have never even watch a nature video, with two animals humping, never mind worked out that Tab A goes in Slot B. There was even an article in some magazine, in the, “Odd medical cases”, about infertility, and two such twits, neither one of which, in something like 5 years of marriage, even managed to “accidentally” figure that one out… Its just…. :shakes head:).
#109 Dalillama, Schmott Guy: ” I mean, looking at Paul Elam, he’s not exactly a Schwatzeneggeresque mountain of muscle there; AFAICT, in his world where men beat the shit out of each other in order to get control of women, guys like Paul Elam would get the shit kicked out of them on a regular basis by other men,”
It’s amazing how many of them believe that they’re badass in the game world, they’re just as badass in real life.
Years ago there was a commercial for a skateboarding game where the player was bragging to Tony Hawk how much better he could skate in the game than Hawk could in real life.
I can sum it all up as such:
Ducks are terrible people.
#115 Dark Jaguar
Ducks are terrible people. And so is Paul Elam.
To be fair, I’d prolly make a pretty terrible duck.
Oh wow! It’s funny how this quote exists nowhere else on the internet. Almost as if PZ Myers is using another made up quote in order to make MRAs look bad.
“I was sent this quote.” Don’t suppose you’d fancy linking to it would you?
You all call yourselves skeptics and then blindly print and comment on clearly made-up, bullshit quotes.
The decent thing would probably be to take this down and apologize to Paul Elam for the slander, but very much doubt you have the class.
I mean really. C’mon. “Mallards reproduce almost exclusively by gang-intrasexual selection.”
How do you actually believe this was written by an MRA? It’s so fucking stoopid.
That’s a screen cap from the A Voice For Men forum.
Funny how it doesn’t show up when you google search the forum. Did you take the screengrab? What was the URL?
I suspect it was originally posted in this thread (note, I am using the ‘Do not link’ service): http://www.donotlink.com/dh9i
Since that thread contains the text by user “willow” which is still there as comment #4. This tends to suggests Paul’s comment was there, and has since been deleted, as being the more parsimonious explanation than “Paul Elam never wrote that”.
I’ve been active on MRM boards for years. I’ve never seen anybody write anything like this. If they did they’d get torn to shreds. I’ve certainly never seen Paul Elam say or write anything that even resembles this. They are not his views.
I don’t know who wrote this, but this has nothing to do with the MRM (Family courts, genital cutting, domestic violence, depression… not ‘ooo I wish we could sexually assault people). The MRM cares about men’s issues. You are getting the MRM mixed up with PUAs and general dickheads.
And it is not like you haven’t done this before, making out like Amazing Atheist was an MRA and that we both condone pedophilia. http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/07/21/its-not-just-creationists-who-mangle-science-some-atheists-do-too/
These are such dirty tactics, and they are not befitting a supposedly well-educated man. Stop spreading lies.
dani.. ask yourself…
has Paul Elam ever said shit like this before?
why yes, yes he has:
http://www.avoiceformen.com/allnews/study-reveals-vicious-behavior-of-competing-women/
122 – That link is a deadend.
“No Thread specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator”
124 – Ask yourself, did he say this? No, no he didn’t.
You can’t be just making stuff like this up.
right, you’re a fuckwit. got it. run along and play now.
Dani, link in #124 is alive. Now, show us you have honesty and integrity, and shut the fuck up. Or you give prima facie evidence you are a liar and bullshitter.
Very well then, add this thread identifier to the base URL for the AVFM forums: showthread.php?14268-The-Truth-About-Rape-Culture
Comment #4 is the comment Elam replied to, and is shown as quoted in the image. Again, parsimony says it’s more likely he said it, then deleted it.
122 – Found the page you’re on about by googling ‘Willows’ comment: http://forums.avoiceformen.com/showthread.php?14268-The-Truth-About-Rape-Culture
You’ll notice that #5 is by a guy called Zane who posted at the exact same time with the same handle, responding to the exact same quote. All that has changed are the response and the user info.
Could lead one to believe that one of you has photoshopped your own words into Paul Elams mouth.
Honestly, this is pathetic. The ethics on this board are fucking crazy. Why do you even do this?
127 – And ‘fuckwit’. Fair enough. Rather be that than some slimeball who thinks its fine to just make shit up about people.
128 – There’s your evidence. I’m really not the liar and the bullshitter here.
It’s got very ” 4’33 ” around here all of a sudden.
Hi dani1956, I’m glad you’ve actually started doing some research! Not only the signature but also the time stamp are the same, which tends to work against what I would have guessed, prima facie, was the more parsimonious explanation. I will grant you then it looks more like someone edited the text (easily done) and pasted in Paul’s credentials over Zane’s — though I will not grant you that the reflexive explanation is that “one of you has photoshopped your own words”. I’m not a fan of dubbing things as “false flags” since as a theory it’s only to convenient, but really. With no shortage of horrible quotes that could have been sourced direct from Paul himself, why would anyone need to concoct a false one?
133 – “With no shortage of horrible quotes that could have been sourced direct from Paul himself, why would anyone need to concoct a false one”
Precisely. I am in no way a fan of Paul Elam. But I do care about various Men’s Rights issues for a variety of reasons. It really upsets me when people (sorry, but it does seem to happen a lot on your side of the argument) seem to conflate caring about Men and issues that affect them with stupid, abhorrent PUA stuff. It’s just totally unnecessary.
Sigh. It looks like dani might have a point here (even though they will continue to insist that one of us made it). Looking on the forums, Paul does not have a signature line. But there is a signature line in the image sent to PZ that he presented here. That signature line is the same for Zane, the poster that Dani mentioned who posted at the exact same date and time in the image in the OP. In addition, the most obvious tell is that the text of the “post” in the OP image is on a whiter background than the rest of the background. Click for the full image: there is clearly a whiter block that the text is on, while the rest of the background has a bluish tinge. There is no white sub-block like that on the actual forums.
So, it looks like dani’s argument is plausible: someone photoshopped Paul Elam’s information over Zane’s, than photoshopped their own new text over the stuff that Zane actually wrote.
Even assholes can be right.
Hi dani1956 at #132, LOL. I’ll have you know the sound of me typing — while I do some other things as well, besides checking out your horrible MRA forum in order to run down the thread for you (as I did in comment 129, rather more successfully than I managed before) — would fit in perfectly well to a composition by John Cage.
Re: your #134, if the quote doesn’t check out, I imagine PZ will redact it from the article, because he doesn’t stand for fake misattributions.
135 – I come for the content. I stay for the barrage of insults. I won’t insist anything. I just want this sort of thing to not be around. Because I’m an ‘asshole’. For some reason.
dani:
Please elaborate. I’m sure it will be endlessly entertaining.
I’m sorry, but it really upsets when you try to pretend that focusing on Men, specifically doing so to contrast yourself to feminism, is a morally neutral act. It isn’t. Do you think white supremacist groups are somehow less racist if they frame it as simply focusing on White Issues, and confronting specifically White Problems, and doing their best to advance white people exclusively? Is the National Association for the Advancement of White People obviously non-racist and with no racist implications?
Slimy PUA bullshit is the least of your fucking worries. And you seem to think that is our prime concern or the biggest problem attributed to the Men’s Rightz crowd? Really?
It does indeed look as if dani1956 is right… that this is not something Paul Elam has actually said, and that Paul Elam never responded to the actual thread. Another tell is that the actual thread name and the thread name shown in the picture are quite different.
On a slightly related note, this is why the AVFM forums, along with the entire rest of the internet (yes, including FTB) need to be snapshotted on the Wayback Machine from here on out… in order to avoid stuff like this from happening in the future.
Well, you did lead with your best argument… umm, not exactly.
There’s no shortage of people within the MRA movement who don’t like Elam very much, judging by the recent fallings-out, to allow this fakery to be sheeted home to any one door.
Quoting NateHevens (#139, 2 February 2015 at 7:44 pm),
Not really, on those sorts of forums thread titles can be renamed within a thread (though most commenters don’t bother).
I shit I missed this:
No true MRM, eh?
(But apparently Pick up artists do routinely express the desire to rape people! The moar you know. Well at least an MRA said it. If we feminists said it, I could only imagine the backlash and outrage!)
138 – It’s not massively entertaining I’m afraid. I was in an abusive relationship for some years and had a very hard time getting help extricating myself from it. There was basically nothing where I live for male victims of DV. So that was a rough time and would like to help someone else in the same situation now I’m back for business. Also an active intactivist.
I’m sorry you went through that, dani. Sincerely.
144 – Thank you. Been out for a year. Got myself on a literature MA. Getting back to how I was. Feeling more awesome everyday.
I’m glad you are feeling better and it is also good to hear that your heart is in the right place and you are focused on helping people in a similar position. I really don’t think the MRM really has the same goals in mind that you do, even if they purport otherwise. But whether they do or don’t, you still have a noble goal so just stay true to that and I hope things continue to improve.
I hope I’m not out of line if I suggest that your goals, dani1956, align better with feminism than the MRM. What you bring up (the lack of DV help and shelters for male victims) is actually one of the reasons I’m a feminist.
And now I hope PZ will look into this. Specifically figure out who sent him this and why, and also put a disclaimer up saying that the quote is fabricated, image photoshopped, and all of it misattributed to Elam. Because, like it has been said, there is more than enough to criticize Elam over that we don’t shouldn’t be leaning on made-up bullshit.
146 – The MRM, and Erin Prizzey in particular, pretty much saved my life. and pretty much everybody I have spoken to in the MRM share very similar ideals to myself.
147 – You’re not at all out of line. There are a lot of overlaps in the goals of the MRM and feminism as you are probably aware. And up until 2 years ago I strongly identified as a feminist and much of my academic work utilized a feminist framework. My personal experience in the UK is that feminist groups hinder the help that could be given to male victims, but I’m guessing you’ve had different experiences.
Why am I skeptical????? I don’t take your word for anything other than unevidenced BS.
150 – You’re right, I don’t know why I find feminist spaces hostile to male victims. I could send you an essay I did that applied the work o f Lisa Downing to the newspaper reports of the Whitechapel murders. That was pretty feminist theory heavy.
dani1956 @ #149:
Yeah, I guess we’ve had very different experiences. My experience with feminism is that what feminism is fighting is what holds many men back, specifically because of the idea of the Manly Man(TM) or the Macho Man(TM). I found, in feminism, a group that accepts me and is fighting for the same things I’m fighting for. I find that not only does feminism help this fight, but feminism is how to fight.
The MRM, on the other hand, comes across almost as the exact opposite to me. While it’s true that I keep up to date on the MRM, PUAs, MGTOW, and so on through places like We Hunted the Mammoth, here, and other feminist places, that isn’t where I started. I did begin by going to the sources, and what I found was basically what’s exactly highlighted by places like WHTM. I see no problem lumping MRAs, PUAs, MGTOWs, and so on all together, because from my perspective, the overlap is hella susbtsantial. I simply can’t be a part of that movement, because I believe in intersectionality and social justice. It is quite obvious to me that male privilege is a thing (just as white privilege, straight privilege, cis privileged, and abled privilege are things… also like Christian privilege and class privilege, as well), and that the patriarchy (along with things like rape culture) are all too real. And it’s feminists fighting to change this.
Or that’s my experience, anyways. I really do think that if MRM actually fought for what it claims to fight for (what you say you fight for), it would actually be a feminist movement. The problem is that it defines itself as an anti-feminist movement, which to me betrays the reality behind the curtain: misogyny, and a preference for the current, and terrible status quo (also bits of “misandry”, like comparing human men to non-human animals in order to blame victims of rape).
152 – I’m definitely not a ‘manly man’. I enjoy knitting far too much for that and mostly socialized with girls growing up. Menly Men are often the very first to laugh at the MRM in my experience, quick to write it off as a bunch of men who aren’t as stoic about family courts, genital integrity and being the victims of violence as they should be.
When you reach out for help with the National DV Helpline, only to be turned away because of your gender, feminism can really seem like not the way to fight. In the MRM I found a group who didn’t blame me for the violent acts perpetrated against me. It was a very shit 7 year period to be in and the MRM and groups like Mankind helped me and many others like me.
152 – And coming from a working class background, de Beauvoirian notions of male transcendence and female imminence never really made sense to me. It was actually reading The 2nd Sex that turned me off the idea of patriarchy.
MRA CLEANUP ON ISLE 3.
155 – Sorry Ichthyic. Nate, if you want to carry on a chat – dan.murphey1956@gmail.com .
Who gives a shit other than you, liar and bullshitter?
Don’t bother, I have you number. And it isn’t a femist….
157 – Ok, I’ll bite. What exactly am I supposed to have lied about?
dani1956: It’s kind of Nerd’s boilerplate response.
GENERAL QUESTION:
Should we import this discussion into the Thunderdome?
I can’t help but think that, if these “issues” where framed in religious terms, the closest I could get to doing so would be, “Well, I hate the Christian Crusaders so much I invented Islam, but radical Imams and terrorism are ***not at all*** my fault, they just sort of happened, as a fringe element!” Uh.. no, sorry, doesn’t work. You either made damn plain, as feminists have, that the “radicals” are not bloody welcome, or you own up to the fact that you created the idiots, and they *are* your problem. Feminism doesn’t have too many radicals any more, but it takes time for some stupid ideas to get flushed. MRA… is still inventing stupid ideas.
Instead of making this a “human” problem, and trying to solve issues on both sides, something which feminists, ironically, acknowledge, and work on fixing, Elam decided to create a new “side”, which fights only for “his” issues, against, “those other people!”. What the F did he expect to happen, and when is he planning to own up to the consequences of **intentionally**, right from word one, couching his “movement” in terms of this being “men’s problems”, and thus a war between two apposing sides, instead of a social problem, which effect **both**? When is his so called movement going to acknowledge that its problems are not in a vacuum, and that his sides own rhetoric, especially the extreme parts of his movement, will only make things worse, instead of solving anything? When does he plan MRA and the rest to step up and admit they are “causing” some of the problems women have, by either denying the problems exist, or creating new ones, in some insane bid to fix both real, and imaginary ones, his “side” has?
What, in essence, is the point of making this a war, which neither side can win, rather than bloody solving real problems, many of which his evil, feminist, enemies would agree with, if he wasn’t waving a flag it everyone’s faces, while hundreds of idiots, which he somehow neither sees as a problem, nor as his fault, yell, “No surrender!!!”, in the background?
160 – I’m assuming that you are aware that Islam wasn’t founded in response to the crusades. But do you really hold Muhammad responsible for the actions of radical clerics and terrorists 1500 years later? I really don’t think he could have possibly imagined today’s geopolitical climate. Although I suppose he was a prophet.
Has it been made clear that radicals are not tolerated in feminism? If you type ‘feminists on Valerie Solanas” into google two of the top results are “Where’s Valerie Solanas When You Need Her” and “Why I love this feminist who hit nuns and shot Andy Warhol”. Which feminist radicals have been shown that they’re “not bloody welcome” exactly?
Has it been made clear reactionary misogynists aren’t allowed to be MRA fuckwits? Get real, or get gone.
162 – As an experiment, go on the Mens Rights board on Reddit and say something overtly misogynistic, and see what happens.
it’s never the over misogynists that are the problem.
it’s the casual ones. like you.
How about you convince me of your sincerity that the feminists have it right. That start with stopping any mention of radical feminism, which is red herring. To say we accept you at your word is an exaggeration.
164 – Care to point out my casual misogyny?
165 – But I don’t think feminists have it right, so would be quite hard to convince you of my sincerity to that fact. And I only mentioned feminist radicals (as opposed to radical feminism) in response to them being brought up in comment #160, where it was suggested that feminism had expunged such people whereas MRM made little or no attempt to do the same.
What do you want to accomplish? (your agenda needs definition)
How is it going? (not well, we have no idea what you want)
Why are you still here?
168 –
-Erm, agenda was pretty clear. Was pointing out that Paul Elam never said what has been reported here.
-Not sure, despite it being made clear the subject of this blogpost has been entirely fabricated, it is still there with Paul Elam’s name attached. If you read from 118 onwards it should be pretty apparent, the fact that it is not clear to you is probably more on your comprehension than my delivery.
-Because you and others have been directly addressing me. Don’t ask questions and then be all like “asshat still here!” That is odd behaviour.
I presume that this response is a clear indication of a reading comprehension problem, and a lack of any sort of capacity to understand metaphor and leave it at that.
You won’t get the last word in, and evidently PZ doesn’t care to fix your concern. We always respond to fuckwittery.
170 – Yeah, guess that’s easier than answering a fairly straightforward question.
171 – okiedoke :-) !
I think defending Paul Elam is all the evidence of casual misogyny one could ever need.
I think using Valerie Solanas as an example of evil radical feminism is excellent evidence of casual misogyny. She has been dead for nearly 30 years, so she isn’t really relevant to modern feminism; and when she was active in civil rights and social activism she disdained the feminists as far too accommodating. Shooting Warhol was due to untreated schizophrenia, and the fact that Warhol was an ass to her. Why does every ignorant anti-feminist use her as the go to example of the evils of feminism? Do they fear an evil feminist plot to take over the world with an army of zombie Valerie Solanas clones?
173 – Difference between defending and saying he didn’t say the above.
174 – The word ‘evil’ is your addition there.
The assertion in #160 was that feminist radicals are not tolerated by other feminists. I attempted to give an example of a ‘radical’ being tolerated. If the facts of the matter are that she was not not a radical, and was mentally ill, then I am guilty of ignorance as opposed to misogyny. Don’t attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance.
And nice victim-blame on Warhol there.
Yeah, really never used her as an example of ‘the evils of feminism.’ I used her as an example of a ‘radical’ being accepted in response to comment #160. I’ve certainly never described feminism as ‘evil’. That would be silly.
Dani the sealion
By offering Valerie Solanas as an example of feminism. the evil subtext is implied.
What should they do, exhume her body and officially excommunicate her or something? She wasn’t involved with the organized feminist movements of her time, so your example fails on multiple levels.
I have been unfailingly polite
It’s about ethics in journalism.
176 – Solanas was offered as an example of a radical accepted by some feminists in response to #160. That is the sum of her relevance to my comment #161. I did not even suggest her as an example of feminism. Any subtext has been projected.
You don’t have to do anything, there is no association between you and Solanas.
By challenging the lady’s prejudice the sealion is creating a nuisance of himself, and the sealion should stfu and let her dislike whoever/whatever she likes? That’s an oddly libertarian cartoon for FTB. (“You can’t tell me to be decent to other people, that’s communism!!!”)
And I don’t follow the journalism connection, sorry.
176 – Sorry, I just looked up ‘sealioning’. I haven’t asked any unsolicited questions in either a civil or uncivil manner. What are you on about? I’ve responded to you to point out that your projected argument bares little resemblance to what I actually said. No questions asked, I’ve just had to repeat the same point repeatedly to nullify your bastardization of what was actually said.
Yeah.
Nope.
Considering that you’re complaining about others bastardising what you’ve said, it’s odd that you’d do the same thing. Disliking somebody isn’t the same as refusing to be decent to other people. For instance, it’s ok, if wildly irrational and bizarre, that some Christians are offended by the existence of gay people. That’s fine. Ridiculous, but fine, they have that right. The thing that’s not alright is when they try to treat gay people as if they weren’t humans, and start talking about setting up “great large fences” to stick them behind.
It would be libertarian to argue that it’s unreasonable to ask that woman to kindly refrain from murdering sealions and wearing their pelts as earrings, but it’s not libertarian to suggest that she has a right to dislike them and not have to deal with sealions pestering her to explain exactly why she doesn’t. You seem to be confusing freedom of thought with freedom of action there, and they’re not remotely the same thing.
Also, given that particular sealion’s tendency to follow people around, invading their privacy and homes for the sake of a “civil conversation” it’s entirely possible that, in this comic world, it’s not at all a prejudice, but a well justified and reasonable stance based on years of past experience with that particular marine mammal.
I don’t think I was altering anybody’s words, just explaining how I understood the cartoon.
That’s an interesting perspective. I suppose I agree that personal opinions are ones own, and that you have the right to believe whatever crazy, messed up shit you want to. But I also think that if such a Christian was spouting homophobia in a public place, then it should be the right of every other person present to challenge him on his views. I’d say that would be an important intervention so halt baseless and bigoted propaganda.
To be honest, if I heard somebody say “I don’t like gay people,” I’d probably have a hard time biting my lip and telling myself that it is their prerogative.
180 – Erm, that is the definition of prejudice, isn’t it? You may have had really bad experiences with XXX group of people. If you then extrapolate upon those experiences and apply your negative emotions to all other people of that group, then that is pre-judging. There’s no such thing as a well justified and reasonable prejudice. You shouldn’t judge large groups of people by the actions of individuals or small groups of people.
By you, not us. We have your number….
You are free to think and express yourself. You are not free from criticism for expressing your self. You don’t see that. Yawn, typical.
And what group are you talking about? MRA fuckwits,who showed their lack of thinking women are people over many threads?
Thank you for your concern, troll, you are excused captain obvious, and your behavior hasn’t changed any minds. Your lack of stating what you want says it all. You want to troll.
Oh good grief, at least discuss something tangentially related to the OP, rather than endless regressions of goalpost movement.
You used someone who didn’t consider herself a feminist, is long deceased, and spent years incarcerated in a mental institution as an example to support your assinine assertion that feminism has to expunge it’s radicals else its a hypocrite ( or something like that, it’s not particularly clear from your posts just what your point might be) Paul Elam is a horrible misogynist, as is easily verified by a quick glance at anything written by AVFM. So, what, other than possible misattribution of this to Elam, is the point of all your whining about feminism? Email PZ with the proof if it’s so gosh darn important to you. Being a disingenuous ass in the comments section doesn’t seem to be having the desired effect.
The reason women do not suffer the burden of anxiety when it comes to mate finding…
Well, I gotta give him points for at least a little consistency here: Elam’s explanation is bogus, but so is the thing he’s pretending to explain.
So the only question left is: Where the ever-loving FUCK did this man-baby get the idea that women don’t have anxiety about finding mates?
The limits of the statement have been explicitly delineated about three times. There is no room for subtext imparted from the author.
You’ve quoted Athywren’s comment 179. Ironically, your response agrees with my sentiments in 181. Soooo, I do see that… reverseyawn.
Any demographic group.
You say it is obvious, and I thought it was too. But if you read #180, you will see that even seemingly blatant facts such as this need reiterating to some people.
184 – Please see 175 and 177
I never said feminism has to expunge its radicals. Just read the words that have been written. Do not project or extrapolate upon them.
I’m not whining about feminism. I was asked a question at 138 and gave a transparent and honest answer. The rest has been correcting subtle contortions of my words. Stop that and I’ll be gone.
185 – Raging Bae, Paul Elam never said it.
Liar. Dani at 161
I’ve already covered the relevance of using VS as an example of feminism, see also Well Poisoning.
Uh-huh, sure.
Arf, arf said the sea lion.
188 – Right, you are clearly having a bit of trouble with your reading comprehension. You do realize that your quote from 161 says nothing about the need to expunge anything. (Indeed, from #177: “You don’t have to do anything, there is no association between you and Solanas.”) I don’t know whether you’re intentionally proving incapable of reading, but it is tedious.
And I don’t think you understand what sea lioning is.
@dani, 182
No. Prejudice is an unjustified and unreasonable stance based on hearsay, rhetoric and fearmongering with no evidential basis beyond isolated incidents and selectively edited encounters, if even that. Basically, the exact opposite.
Yes, but when you’re following people around, hounding them, refusing to let them get on with their life, then you’re the arsehole in that picture. This is obvious, surely? Even to an MRA?
I’d describe basing your opinion of all ‘sealions’ on the actions of one ‘sealion’ as unjustified and unreasonable.
Framing this thread as me hounding anybody is incredibly disingenuous.
Spoken to OPTA and got the stats regarding hounding.
– Dani1956: 34 of the last 73 comments (46%)
– There have been 7 separate respondents
– Dani1956 10 questions asked vs respondents 18 questions asked
– That is 0.29 questions/comment vs. 0.46 q/c
0.29 requests for information per comment is not hounding.
–
And if that was the case, you would have a point.
It isn’t, you don’t.
This is clearly exactly what was expected. Meaning it is common. Meaning it is not basing opinion of all sealions on the actions of one, but basing an opinion of sealions on repeated actions over a significant period of time.
Framing my comments as having actual opinions about the rhetorical strategies of sea lions based on a single comic is also incredibly disingenuous… and yet, that’s not actually what you did, is it?
Using the general ‘you’ in one sentence, and then objecting to the use of the general ‘you’ in the very next sentence is just… it’s as if some idealistic scientist from the 70’s era Marvel comics decided they were going to create a being consisting of the purest embodiment of the Socratic method, using gamma radiation of course, but Something(™) went wrong; the nascent Socratism merged with the scientist, warping the very fabric of reality around and through their vulnerable flesh, and now the resultant horror has to live in the swamps or human civilisation will hunt it down.
We do. PZ had a thread about it. You have no idea what it is, but you should, as you are doing it.
Quit pretending you are smarter than us. It just shows how stupid you really are.
Ah, here comes the paranoia. You are making this thread about you. Stop doing that. That is a sea lioning technique.
195 – This really shouldn’t need explaining, but repeatedly calling somebody a ‘sealion’ and then saying “but when you’re following people around, hounding them, refusing to let them get on with their life, then you’re the arsehole in that picture.” It has also been specifically alleged that I am sealioning in 194. I am not following anybody around at all.
I’m not sealioning as I am making no attempts to engage you. I’ve asked 37% less questions than you have made of me., to suggest that I am the instigator runs contrary to the facts of the matter.
No, you aren’t going away, or forwarding your argument. You are just constantly there complaining. SeaLioning.
No, it runs to the facts:
What do you hope to accomplish by staying here?
How is it going? *not well at all*
So, why haven’t you left?
Sealioning is the repeated request for information in an attempt to derail. I’m not requesting anything.
The facts are that you have asked more questions of me than I have asked of you. That is unarguable.
Answered those three questions before. I’m not just going to let you put words into my mouth. If you say that I’ve said something when that is not the case, I’m going to point that out. Sorry.
Nope, it is where you don’t leave, but your continued presense repeating yourself derails the thread. Which you are doing.
And we will point out when YOU are wrong. Which you are. Until you can accept that fact, your ego is in your way of enlightenment.
That’s not a definition I have seen.
PZ Myers: “I’ve got a couple of them dogging me with a lot of bad faith demands and questions (you know, of the “Just Asking Questions” type, or JAQing off) and they don’t seem to understand why I block and filter their ever-so-persistently-polite leading questions and insistent demands.”
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/01/01/at-last-a-comprehensive-reply-to-sea-lions/
Simplikation: “Chances are you’ve seen this comic by David Malki if you frequent Twitter at all these days. It even coined a new verb – “sealioning” – to describe the act of jumping into a discussion with demands for evidence and answers to questions.“
Ok, I realise that following multiple threads at more or less the same time can be taxing. Allow me to clarify that which is already abundantly clear.
My comments are aimed at your nonsensical assertion that taking issue with sealioning is a libertarian view that complains about being asked to be decent to people, akin to telling people not to criticise those who spout homophobic nonsense in public. Frankly, I don’t give a fuck about the rest of the comments being aimed at you (no offence, everyone else, I just don’t have the patience to scroll through, find where the thread was necro’d and read through all the argle and bargle).
The thing is, what you’re either failing or refusing to understand is that the sea lion is a metaphor, and not one that represents the oppressed minority here. The sea lion is not a gay kid who is asking the homophobic preacher to explain why they should be stoned to death, or locked away, or registered as a sex offender, or even simply denied the right to marry in the street where the preacher is publicly preaching.
The sea lion is the homophobe who, upon hearing the exasperated criticism of homophobes by the couple passing through that preacher’s zone of bile, demands an explanation of how they have been harmed by a homophobe. It’s not about what group you belong to, it’s about the strategies you employ in defending the group. Playing innocent and ignorant; drawing false equivalences; playing word games; demanding concrete evidence of causative links between smear campaigns and direct action against those targeted by the smears; refusing to recognise that your input is neither new nor interesting, needed nor wanted, and refusing to leave when these things are pointed out to you; responding to the previous with cries of “echo chamber!”
It is not always all of these things, and this isn’t an exhaustive list – oh, but another came to mind; pointing out that you’re not engaging in one of the commonly recognised tactics in order to deny that you’re engaged in it when called on it.
It’s not about changing the minds of the people you’re talking to, because you know they know you’re full of shit – it’s about making them look bad to disinterested but unskeptical outsiders. And, hey, maybe it’s possible that members of oppressed minorities do engage in those tactics while defending their minority group from unjust and prejudiced comments, but it would be particularly foolish of them to engage in such verbal ducking and diving when they have actual points on their side that they can just lay out for all to see.
So, anyway calling someone out for sealioning isn’t prejudice, and it isn’t a call to allow prejudice to go unchallenged, it’s a description of a particular set of dishonest behaviours that you’re engaged in.
Err, yes, just like that. Well done.
Can I still dislike parrots? They’re kinda loud.
Mosquitos?
Especially those that transmit malaria?
201 – I’m afraid you are going to have to read the other comments to furnish yourself with the context. Homophobia was brought up by Athywren in 179. Otherwise you’re just lifting a response and treating it in isolation, and that is going to misrepresent the intent whether you intend to or not.
I feel like you have expanded the definition of sealion somewhat, and added exceptions not present in the cartoon itself.
“anyway calling someone out for sealioning isn’t prejudice” – When did I say it was? That just isn’t something that has been said.
“it isn’t a call to allow prejudice to go unchallenged” – I should hope not. Treating the cartoon in isolation, however, that could certainly be one interpretation. You do seem to be using it as a call to allow your (let’s be kind and say) “paraphrasing” of my words to go unchallenged.
202 – Extending the definition of words to corroborate yourself doesn’t prove anything.
nor does your evidenceless opinions. You have nothing to say, and prove it by posting nothing but whingings.
Never heard of ’em! ó_o;
Anyway, here’s the comment I was referring to.
Who brought it up (Me. It was me. I am Athywren. Athywren is me. FFS!) is irrelevant – although I have somehow managed to furnish myself with the required context – you are the one who made the comparison referenced after it was brought into the discussion.
Nope.
So? Cartoons of that type are meant to be snappy, not all encompassing. Why would you expect it to be? Besides, maybe the term was coined by this comic, but this particular suite of behaviours are intricately linked and existed long before the comic. Why would we only apply the label to the one small aspect shown? That’s absurd.
Oh, but, of course, the playing word games bit is actually called Ottering. (Do not take the preceding sentence seriously. It is a joke.)
Here;
Who the fuck would treat such a limited metaphor in isolation? *headdesk*
@Giliell, 203
Malarial parrots: Not even once.
I’m sorry Athywren, that was a careless oversight.
And you are right, they are not all encompassing. But that doesn’t mean you can just create your own definition:
“Playing innocent and ignorant; drawing false equivalences; playing word games; demanding concrete evidence of causative links between smear campaigns and direct action against those targeted by the smears; refusing to recognise that your input is neither new nor interesting, needed nor wanted, and refusing to leave when these things are pointed out to you; responding to the previous with cries of “echo chamber!”
It is not always all of these things, and this isn’t an exhaustive list – oh, but another came to mind; pointing out that you’re not engaging in one of the commonly recognised tactics in order to deny that you’re engaged in it when called on it.”
and assert that that is the ‘true’ meaning of the term. There is no indication anywhere in the cartoon or associated articles or from the author that “pointing out that you’re not engaging” is synonymous with sealioning.
You’re having another reading comprehension problem I fear. “anyway calling someone out…” quote =/= “I’d describe basing…” quote. Nobody has said that calling somebody out for sealioning is prejudice. I don’t understand how you have drawn that from the second quote.
Anybody who sees the cartoon without any knowledge of the author is treating it in isolation. I’d imagine that most people who see it will be giving an isolated reader response. If I had seen it anywhere else, and it had been provided by someone less likely to be socially conscious, I would have interpreted it as being far more sinister. The only indication that the intentions of the author are benign (or otherwise) outside of the cartoon itself is the person who provides it. (ie. if that homophobic preacher presented it, it would take on an entirely different meaning).
Ah, so you were referring to our serious anti-sea lion bigotry problem then?
Well what can I say? We just hate marine mammals here. Sea lions, seals, hell, even whales, dolphins, porpoises – fuck the lot of them! They’re just shifty man, I tell ya, they’re just up to something! Even hippos are suspect.
208 – I’m sorry, I cannot follow that at all. There is no reference in the quoted text to anything written thereafter :-/.
I am no proposing literalism, that much should be clear. The sea lion is allegorical, there is more room for ambiguity in the reader’s response than I feel you are granting credit in your detailed and expanded definition of sealioning. Your extended definition is baseless.
Not when my plot to overthrow the OED comes to fruition it’s not! Muahaha!
Athywren
You are a horrible person and should be ashamed of yourself.
Hippos are great!
And don’t forget otters.
@Giliell
I am deeply ashamed of myself for not clarifying that otters are implicitly trusted and adored in all things – they’re basically sea dogs. Actual sea otters are literally pirates – they’re salty sea dogs! Indeed, nothing bad can be said about the otter. Yargh!
Hippos are in league with the cetacean villains, though. Do not trust them.
Since Elam has explicitly denied making that comment, and since it does look as if it was faked, I am now tracking down my correspondent and will give them a chance to explain themselves…and will post something later, whether they reply or not.
Oh hordelings, I love what you have done with this thread. I have had a good laugh getting caught up. This is the best part;
which came a few comments after this gem;
Hee! Hippos and sea-lions and now hounds too? ( plus statistics!) It’s a veritable menagerie!
someone call Dr Doolittle?
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- #211:
The square on the hippo is equal to the sum of the squares on the otter sides.
Oh man. please tell me you just made that up on the fly?
awesome.
I did. And thank you.
Sssshhhhhhhh, it’s crowded enough in here already! Where will we put the pushmi-pullyus, the Great pink sea snail, or the giant lunar moth?