This is almost funny, but really – it’s not, it’s disgusting. Paul Elam warning his posse not to talk violent threatening crap at their shiny conference because someone might hear them. David Futrelle at We hunted the mammoth has the story:
Well, you probably shouldn’t post a public announcement warning the raving misogynists who will be attending your conference to refrain from launching into violent anti-woman rants at the drop of a hat because someone might hear them. Because the fact that you feel it necessary to issue such a warning is kind of a giant clue that a significant number of the conference attendees are raving misogynists given to launching into anti-woman rants at the drop of a hat.
I bring this up because Paul Elam posted just such a warning on his site last night in a post that he labeled “Important Message for AVFM Conference Ticket Holders.”
[T]here will be ideological opponents to the MHRM, including some members of the media, present at the event. Some will be looking for anything they can to hurt us with. They will be listening, eavesdropping, and if they can, gathering things to harm us with.
For that reason, ANYONE sitting around trash-talking women, men, making violent statements, even jokingly, will be brought to the attention of security who will issue ONE warning (or less). After that, they will be directed by security to leave. There are no exceptions.
Please, for all here who are attending, keep this in mind with everything you do and say. Even at after-hours social events, if you hear anyone saying anything that can be used against us, or that makes our gathering toxic, pull them aside politely and say, “Hey, you are hurting us with this. If you want to hang with this group you have to stop it.”
You have to stop it because…because…because it makes us look bad, which we are, but we want to hide the fact that we are while this conference is on.
I’ve never run across this sort of warning at any other conference I’ve been to, or read about. I’m guessing that when the American Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgery holds its annual trade show it doesn’t have to warn attendees not to bad-mouth their sworn enemies: Ear, Nose and Throat specialists. Or that the Electronic Transactions Association has to specifically forbid its convention-goers from publicly threatening to kill people who still like to pay with cash.
Maybe they do. Maybe they’re just a bit more discreet about it.
I’ve never heard that either. I’ve been to a few conferences – not many, but a few – and I’ve never been told not to sit around threatening people where someone might overhear me. It just never came up. I wonder why that is.
This reminds me of creationist websites having to post warnings about parody sites to their users because their own beliefs are so off the wall even they can’t tell the difference.
Wait – aren’t these some of the same people who have fulminated with great vehemence against Codes of Conduct at conventions?
tigtog at 2- Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. To render it even more ironic, theirs CoC doesn’t even require the target of harassment be present.
um…isn’t that kind of the whole point?
“Help! Help! We’re being oppressed!!”
Oh, Paul Elam. It must be so difficult keeping all those talking points synchronized and palpable. Those wild and unshaven, undisciplined, clammy and craven Defenders of Men ™ might accidentally tip your hand! Get your herds of bluffing whiners in line, man!
(I lol’d.)
That is hi-fucking-larious. They have better rules than TAM!
Sweet Jesus on roller skates, it’s the Sooper Seekrit He-Man Women Haters Club!
I am weak with laughter.
“Just don’t get caught.”
Is really, really not a good rule for … anything.
Well, it’s not like they actually have a problem with making violent threats, they just don’t want them to come to the attention of the media.
What are they going to talk about then? It’s not as if they have anything else to say..
So I guess that includes speakers. During their talks. That’d be fun to see.
The horrible injustice of family courts: How the fact that you were not the primary caregiver before divorce means you’Re not going to be the primary caregiver afterwards.
Becuase so far I have not seen them campaign for men changing more dirty diapers, working only part time, doing the laundry and such…
Oh yes, because to the extent that women are, in fact, favored over men in matters of child custody, that’s clearly because of relentless political pressure from the feminist lobby* and has nothing to do with patriarchal ideas about child care as women’s work.
*Citation unneccessary
(you know, the kind that feminists oppose).
Citations are misandry
This really made me laugh:
Where oh where are the ‘pitters to fight for freeze peach?
Backdooring approximated anti-harassment orientated policies. Pretty sneaky, sis.
OK, now try to maintain your cognitive dissonance here, but tone down the bad behavior because someone might notice, and then we’ll be called out on bad behavior (and shit-for-brains thinking and beliefs), and that just makes it harder to enjoy such behavior in slightly less public circumstances maybe. Or someone could get busted doing something legally actionable while behaving in a manner that reflects our rhetoric.
Elam here sort of reminds me of the Discovery Institute where the latter’s attempts to come up with clever disguises to sneak their pseudo-science into science classes are usually ruined by their less, um, modest allies’ inability to keep on message.
I guess this is just a common thread amongst groups of irrational people that you have the dishonest opportunists at the top who are intelligent enough to provide some cover to hide their true agenda. Then you have descending tiers of raving morons who just cannot be leashed, especially when all the rhetoric they’ve been pumped full of was meant to persuade them that they shouldn’t have to be, and prevented from blowing the carefully designed cover.
Even happening with ISIS. ISIS, FFS.
Say, not to derail, as this discussion has been FUCKING BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!! but I had a *moment* yesterday, picking up my teenage son and 6 male teenage friends from the fair. I keep the child-lock button on because my son likes to be annoying by running his window down randomly. Well, they thought the pretty young woman in the car next to us at the stop light looked like someone they knew, so they were begging me to let them run the windows down so they could yell stuff at her. (She turned out to be a complete stranger.) After all, the light was about to turn and we’d go our separate ways, so where’s the harm?
I rejected their plea, on the following grounds:
Harassing strange women and driving away does not make harassing strange women okay.
It even rhymes!!
See? Not TOO far off topic 🙂
Somehow makes me think of the Catholic Church.
I looked over some material and another couple disturbing things struck me besides the offensive language. Even IF they had point with some of these complaints, they should admit that it would only apply to a few First World countries. But that would detract from their sense of having a very important, universally meaningful worldview.
They seem to be oblivious to the existence of most of the planet. Few “non-white” counties besides Japan had a presence on the international contact list. Little sense that any of them could imagine or empathize with problems worse than a supposedly unfair divorce settlement or policies in a middle class work or school setting that they think are too intrusive. This is very much unlike feminist writing which examines many issues without being limited by the location or class of those involved.
For one of an infinite number of possible examples; since most people in military roles are men, war is maybe worse for a nation’s men if it’s a powerful nation that sends troops to invade other countries or side in their civil wars. What about the countries where said fighting is going on, or if two countries that border on each other are at war(or civil wars, disputed territories, etc.)? I’ve always heard that women fare worse in such situations.
Not to mention the many parts of the world where even their spin doctoring couldn’t create the slightest illusion of “female privilege” so they simply don’t bother and hope nobody they meet comes from there or keeps up with current affairs on a global level.
It’s sad that a distant ancestor of this movement was the concept of a “men’s movement” that believed in freeing both sexes from rigid gender expectations and dealing with how archaic modes of manhood and masculinity lead men to harm women, themselves and each other. Look, for example, at the shocking decline of Warren Ferrell`s work since the 70s.
@Ed #21
Ed, I hate to tell you this, but–
They actually do claim that “female privilege” exists in such countries. Being confined to the house in Islamist countires means the women are kept safe, unlike the poor men who have to go out in the world and face dangers. (I’m sorry I don’t have the time to hunt down the citation, but I’ve seen this argued–I think by GirlWritesWhat.) And the fact that “In India, where women are routinely harassed in public and groped on train cars, there are a tiny number of women-only train cars set up to cut down on the groping” was cited by Paul Elam as a grave injustice to men (quoting Dave Futrelle.)
And don’t get me started on Warren Farrell. He tries to maintain a veneer of egalitarianism, but he’s always been a vacuous, sexist fool. http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/03/07/warren-farrell-is-an-ass-man/
Stacy-
Wow, those India and Middle East rationalization examples are disgusting. Now because I can’t look away from something morbidly fascinating, I’ll probably end up reading it for myself and raising my blood pressure.
Right now I need to take care of the dogs but I’ll read the Ferrell link you provided soon. I don’t know much about him personally (and hadn’t read him or even heard his name in a long time until I was disappointed to see him on the schedule for those jackass` conference) but I remember liking some of his early books when I was younger. Then his books started getting noticeably creepy and I stopped reading or thinking about him.
Maybe I was naive and didn’t notice the bad stuff in the books I liked; I really can’t say right off since most of my books are in storage and I can’t get to them without driving out to a warehouse.
How I saw it at the time was that he moved from talking about both sexes being harmed by gender-specific roles and expectations that clash with actual human needs to an actual anti-feminist position. But maybe he always was a jerk and just used a liberal attitude to attract readers.
Ed, fortunately Dave Futrelle at We Hunted the Mammoth wades through the toxic sludge and somehow manages to report on it with humor, which helps his readers maintain their blood pressure at healthy levels!
I can’t vouch for what will happen if you go directly to the source, though. :\
saaaweet fancy moses! They really are saying…..”don’t talk about the bad women and why they are bad” when Bad Women are their raison d’ Elam??
Or, you know, like…attending the event.
Yeah, they aren’t attending the event, they’re lying evil eavesdropping….something something….freeze peach!!