By David Futrelle
It’s always a little disconcerting when the people I write about on this blog pop up in the, you know, real news. But, provided it’s not because they’ve murdered anyone, it can also be quite hilarious.
Earlier this week, it was the alt-right-adjacent former Gamergater Sargon of Akkad — a.k.a. Carl of Swindon — who took a bit of a drubbing in the press after announcing his candidacy for the European Parliament under the banner of the right-wing, immigrant-hating UKIP party. Carl discovered quite quickly that the absolutely horrendous stuff he says on the regular on YouTube doesn’t go over quite as well with the general public as it does with the extremely online shitposters who make up his fan base. Even The Sun has labeled him a “sicko.”
And now the British press has discovered the former glories of everyone’s favorite Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men, courtesy of Tory MP Philip Davies, who will be speaking at the AVFM-linked
International Conference on Men’s Issues, scheduled to take place in Chicago in August.
Because the laws of shit gravity mean that huge shits tends to attract other huge shits, Carl of Swindon will also be speaking at the event, as well as another YouTuber-turned-UKIP-candidate known as Count Dankula, who until his candidacy was best known for teaching his dog how to sieg heil. Davies, then sporting what was possibly the world’s worst haircut, spoke at a previous International Conference on Men’s Issues in 2016.
The Guardian, reporting on Davies’ planned appearance at this year’s event, noted that
Another speaker is Paul Elam, an American who leads a group called A Voice for Men. The Southern Poverty Law Centre, which monitors extreme and far-right activity in the US, included Elam on a list of “male supremacists”.
Ah yes, we know him well.
After describing Elam’s repugnant Regsiter-Her site, a phony “offenders registry” that displayed profiles of feminist writers alongside those of convicted female sex offenders and other female criminals, The Guardian noted that
Elam wrote a response to one female critic [of Register Her] on the Voice for Men website saying: “You see, I find you, as a feminist, to be a loathsome, vile piece of human garbage. I find you so pernicious and repugnant that the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection.”
One of Elam’s Greatest Hits, that comment. The Guardian went on:
Elam has defended men responding violently to women who strike them, writing: “If you don’t want to be slapped, backhanded, punched in the mouth, decked or throttled, keep your stinking hands off of other people.”
He has called for a “bash a violent bitch month”, saying this was satire intended to raise awareness of female violence against men.
The “satire” claim has always been a bit laughable. What Elam actually said was that it would be justifiable and effective for men “to beat the living shit out of” women who hit them.
I don’t mean subdue them, or deliver an open handed pop on the face to get them to settle down. I mean literally to grab them by the hair and smack their face against the wall … .
The only reason he wouldn’t advocate this course of action wholeheartedly (and non-satirically), he explained at the time, was that
it isn’t worth the time behind bars or the … anger management training that men must endure if they are uppity enough to defend themselves from female attackers.
Though the Guardian didn’t push back on the satire claim, the article still offered a pretty fair assessment of Mr. Elam, based on his own words. Since Elam hasn’t really accomplished much beyond talking shit on the internet, and amplifying the voices of others who are nearly as terrible as him, it’s a fair enough basis for judgement.
Elam always claimed that his shit talking was an ingenious strategy to get the attention of the world, after which he would (presumably) bring out his true self and emerge as a beloved elder statesman of the Men’s “Human Rights” movement.
It was basically a very underpants gnome-ish plan.
- Call women whores
- Get famous
- ???
- Men’s Rights utopia on earth
There were just a few problems with this plan. For one thing, Elam seems utterly incapable of “moving on” from being an asshole to being an actual admirable human being that non-misogynists could actually respect. “Asshole” is pretty much his essence. I mean, you can see for yourself in the video below just how he kicks back and relaxes with his friends. (I apologize for posting this video yet again, bad language and all, but it is perhaps the best short introduction to the essence of Elamism and one of my favorite short films of all time.)
Also, if you devote years of your life to saying the most horrific hateful shit on the internet, people tend to remember this hateful shit. Every time the Men’s Rights movement comes up in the news, Elam’s “Bash a Violent Bitch Month” post will too. If there was even a sliver of respectability to the Men’s Rights movement before Elam came along, he and his cronies have tarnished it forever.
And so it’s no wonder that Davies, trying to justify his appearance alongside Elam and Dankula and Carl of Swindon, has essentially thrown them under the bus. “Is no-one allowed to speak about [Men’s Rights issues] lest some nutter happens to also be at the same event?” he asked rhetorically when quizzed about his scheduled speech by talkradio.co.uk.
Hopefully there will be many more embarrassments in store for everyone involved in the conference before it gets underway in August.
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