User:Larry Wumpus/A Voice for Men

A Voice for Men is a reactionary anti-feminist website that is both the most prominent flagship of the "men's rights movement" and indicative of everything wrong with the movement. It was founded by Paul Elam in 2009 and hosts a news blog, a live internet radio show, and forums where men can complain about women that done them wrong. It's run like a personality cult, with Elam hiring bootlick cronies for contributors, silencing all dissent with deletion and bans, and demanding slavish devotion from his followers, even flat out telling them to take vows of poverty. Because of that, it's unsurprising they're constantly in-fighting with other manosphere websites and cult leaders figureheads.

Despite claiming to be "a voice for men" and to have "compassion for men and boys", the site, its staff, and its viewpoints on the world are very cynical and misanthropic, with the general belief that humanity is just fucked and there's very little that can be done to un-fuck it. They don't give the slightest shit about actually helping genuinely disadvantaged men, instead telling everybody that won't give them money to fuck off. Outside of meager web hosting, recording equipment, and legal costs with the occasional bounty for personal information of critics, they spend no money towards real activism and the 80,000 dollars a year they aim to reap in donations vanishes into their pockets.

Outside of their general disdain for humanity, they view every last woman as a shrill, overbearing, slutty, sperm-jacking harpy, a soulless husk of a prudish, cockblocking, money-stealing, non-recriprocating succubus bent on the exploitation and extinction of the entire male gender under the stiletto heel of their feminist worldwide conspiracy to take away the rights of the proper mammoth-hunting heirs of this world. Yes, even the women with severe internalized self-hatred that support their "cause". Don't question the logic of their viewpoints too much; like Christianity, they expect you to take everything they say with the faith of a child and will "fuck your shit up" (yes, those are their actual words) if you don't.

While the Southern Poverty Law Center doesn't list it in their main hate group directory, they have reported multiple times on the site's blatant misogyny, violent attitudes, and mass harassment of women.

Worldview

Since they mostly only talk about how women and modern society are eviiiiiil, it's unusually difficult to figure out what, exactly, they are hoping to accomplish. Their policies page speaks only in the vaguest general terms about fighting "oppression" while even flat out saying they don't engage in politics. There is so much cognitive dissonance in their social views that the only real explanation is sheer, unadulterated hatred of women, which Paul Elam directly admits. Given Elam's overriding obsession with people donating, hatred of anyone that won't give lots of money, the needlessly lurid writing style, the site's broad attempts to appeal to all corners of the MRA spectrum (notably, trying to attract both female MRAs and Men Going Their Own Way, the separatists that want absolutely nothing to do with women), and the lack of genuine activism, it's not unfair to think the whole site exists as a cynical cash grab.

Assuming they genuinely believe absolutely everything they say, just going by implication alone, their ideal society is a combination of family values and outright social slavery of women. They subscribe to evolutionary psychology and biological determinism, with the belief that men are inherently superior in every single way They want women to have zero legal recourse against any exploitation, harassment, or violence from men. They want women to be barred from "male-only" spaces (which, to them, is basically the entirety of popular culture) while also barring women from having spaces of their own. Basically, they want a secular version of fundamentalist Islam.

Characterization of women and feminism

A Voice for Men views feminism as a monstrous, all-enveloping evil somewhere between Hitler, Satan, and Cthulhu. They characterize feminist doctrine as mass brainwashing and believe its goals of equality to be a cover for a mass conspiracy to oppress men into subservience via social pressures and legal biases. They believe the entire academic and political community to be in on this conspiracy, with all statistics demonstrating a societal bias against women falsified by the evil power-grabbing feminist cabal. Their standards of investigation into the validity of statistics amounts to "does it say what we want it to say?" Like creationists and other crackpots, they hold this viewpoint to be self-evident and expect others to disprove their wild claims (which is impossible since they choose what evidence they consider to be valid).

TBD: sources, their dim view on anyone that isn't white and heteronormative. This video has lots of great primary sources linked.

Views on dating, marriage, and reproductive rights

A Voice for Men plays to the nice guy demographic of believing that women should be socially obligated into sexual relationships if the man is polite and supplicating enough. With all they talk about divorce settlements and family court being weapons of The Woman, they seem to believe such things should be abolished altogether.

A Voice for Men believes that men should have all the power when it comes to children. They believe that men should either have a say in whether or not women get an abortion or have the option to abandon their own children (a "paper abortion"). Because of this, many members are against organizations that facilitate abortions such as Planned Parenthood.

TBD: more sources.

Views on sexual and domestic violence

A Voice for Men tows the MRA party line of believing that there is no amount of rape or domestic violence that can't be justified to prevent one single innocent man from the minor inconvenience of being investigated by the police. They believe false accusations to be endemic while subscribing to the usual rape culture trivialization of any rape that isn't the stalker in the bush with a knife scenario. They believe that marriage should involve the woman giving irrevocable consent in all circumstances. They believe that despite statistics (which are, like, totally falsified by The Woman, man), domestic violence is mostly female-on-male while believing that most male-on-female violence is justifiable retaliation.

Both John the Other and Paul Elam have stated they "don't give a fuck/damn about rape victims" and has accused women who've been raped of bringing the crime committed against them upon themselves because "they are stupid (and often arrogant) enough to walk though [sic] life with the equivalent of a [sic] I'M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH – PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign glowing above their empty little narcissistic heads." He has also stated that he would vote to acquit in the event he were called to serve on the jury in a rape trial even if he knew for a fact that the accused were guilty.

TBD: more sources.

Contributors

TBD: Is this really necessary? Paul and John are near-indistinguishable from each other while Karen "GirlWritesWhat" Straughan is only notable for her horrible internalization issues (also MRAs hate her and even call her a useful idiot).

Writing and activism style, or "Fuck Their Shit Up"

The site is written with the most misogynistic language imaginable. The site finds a way to shoehorn in how they consider women to be inferior in everything (e.g. claiming the wage gap is because women are inherently worse workers). Practically every third word is "bitch", "whore", or "cunt", which is how it describes practically every woman it talks about along with propagating every sexist stereotype imaginable (especially slut-shaming). The site assigns bad faith to every single action a woman does and lumps everybody into the imaginary worldwide feminist conspiracy. There is no middle ground, no compromise, no empathy, no discussion; everybody is either a snarling monster or giving Elam their money.

Far beyond just complaining in their own space, they engage in campaigns of mass retaliatory harassment of those they disagree with. This is detailed in their doctrine of "fuck their shit up" (FTSU), which is exactly what it sounds like. They do this by doxing targets and urging everybody to shout threats, spread malicious rumors, and fuck with the target's personal life until they shut up (and long after that, too). Elam facilitates this with sister site Register-Her.com, a fake offender's registry intended to vilify and intimidate women. The primary sections are "false accuser" (which it assigns to every rape victim whose trial did not result in the rapist's conviction and jail time) and "anti-male bigot", which is a catch-all term for everybody the site wants to have shit fucked up. The site's inclusion of real female criminals is solely to conflate real crimes with displeasing the MRA hivemind.

Despite many of A Voice for Men's policies calling for non-violent action, Elam has zero concern about the safety of his victims. In fact, he has stated that the site could feature a listee's "name, address, phone number … even her routes to and from work," though to date he has not gone so far as publishing addresses and phone numbers.

In this sense, their real-world retaliation against criticism basically makes them no different than the Church of Scientology.

Incidents of harassment and victim blaming

Mommy blogger, red haired Canadian, random person at activist rally, Anita Sarkeesian, Rebecca Watson, Tory Shepherd, victim blaming of the Queens University woman

TBD: more cases of harassment, expand current ones

Other major incidents

TBD: poster campaigns, the false rape report spamming of Occidental College, etc.

Analysis of their mission statement

TBD: this section may no longer be necessary

The website has a mission statement that outlines their social goals. Many of their points are rebutted in the main men's rights article while others are values they don't actually uphold in practice.

Mission statement

Analysis

It is AVfM’s mission to facilitate the following:

The dissemination of information that will expose misandry on all levels in our culture.

This begs the question that misandry is a significant cultural problem. It isn't. Just read the main men's rights article.

To denounce the institution of marriage as unsafe and unsuitable for modern men, and to promote awareness of information designed to protect men who are already married.

All their views on marriage are dog whistles for legalizing marital rape and domestic violence.

To promote an end to chivalry in any form or fashion.

If by "an end to chivalry", they really mean "ending basic human decency". This is the group that has turned "fuck their shit up", a doctrine based around doxing and mass harassing anyone that disagrees with them into terrified silence, into their unofficial site slogan. (For those keeping track at home, their "official" slogan is "take the red pill". Because it's still 1999 somewhere in the world.)

To promote the legal and nonviolent antagonism of all agents of misandry, from members of academe, to holders of public office, to law enforcement and other state functionaries, to popular bloggers and to corporate agents who promote misandry for profit.

They don't criticize anyone with actual social status, instead targeting mommy bloggers, cultural critics, and women that dare to not like sexual advances at 4:00 in the morning while cornered in an elevator.

To support peaceful acts of civil disobedience when necessary

By hosting a terrorist manifesto calling for firebombing court houses and specifically advocating men "beat the living shit out of [women]" as retaliation against "abuse" (instead of, oh, calling the police or something, but do you even need a citation to tell you they think the police are corrupt?).

To educate men and boys about the threats they face in feminist governance and to promote an end to that governance.

[insert rebuttal here]

To debunk the lies and distortions of misandry and feminist governance wherever they occur.

[insert rebuttal here]

To offer a more reasoned, cogent and intellectually honest view of sexual politics.

[insert rebuttal here]

To address the variety of problems faced by men and boys under feminist governance and attempt to ameliorate those

[insert rebuttal here]

To push for an end to rape hysteria, [domestic violence] hysteria and false allegations.

If anything, there isn't nearly enough "rape hysteria". It's estimated that only 40% of rape incidents are reported, 10% result in arrests, 8% go to court, 4% result in convictions, and 3% result in jail time. False reporting rates are not significantly higher than false reports of theft, vandalism, personal injury, or any other crime. In the United States (the only country that matters here because of course they're American centric) in 1996, the FBI put the percentage of "unfounded" rape cases at 8% Note that "unfounded" means doesn't mean that no sexual violence occurs; it means the event either didn't fit within a very narrow definition of "rape" or the police didn't think there was enough evidence to even consider investigating. Of course, they helped summarize their views on dating and relationships with the lovely quote: “”"But are these women asking to get raped? In the most severe and emphatic terms possible the answer is NO, THEY ARE NOT ASKING TO GET RAPED. They are freaking begging for it. Damn near demanding it. And all the outraged PC demands to get huffy and point out how nothing justifies or excuses rape won’t change the fact that there are a lot of women who get pummeled and pumped because they are stupid (and often arrogant) enough to walk though life with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH – PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign glowing above their empty little narcissistic heads."

To promote a culture that values equal treatment under the law for all human beings.

You mean like real feminism instead of the vanishingly-small number of female supremacists they nutpick to fulfill their strawman confirmation bias? Even then, they fall back on biological determinism in the name of the naturalistic fallacy all the time, which is as far from "equal treatment" as possible.

The Values

AVfM regards gender ideologues and all other agents of misandry as a social malignancy. We do not consider them well intentioned or honest agents for their purported goals and extend to them no more courtesy or consideration than we would klansmen, skinheads, neo Nazi’s or other purveyors of hate. We will educate them where they are willing to learn, but hold them accountable for their ignorance as much as their actions.

[insert rebuttal here]

We take no side at all in partisan political struggles and, after weighing the evidence at hand, generally tend to view all organized mainstream political options as misandric.

If this is the case, then why does the site even exist in the first place? If they genuinely believe politics to be pointless and refuses to engage in them, they cannot be considered an activist group by any legal or dictionary definition. Of course, the reality is that they actually are into politics (they can be best described as "vaguely libertarian/objectivist") and this statement is to excuse them from doing any real activism such as protests, PSAs through mainstream channels, lobbying politicians, or charity work because it would mean putting donation money towards things that aren't Paul's Netflix subscription.

We support and endorse only non-violent reactions to feminist governance and in fact are trying to head off future acts of violence that feminist governance is sure to foment.

Again, "fuck their shit up".

We oppose all state authority over or interference in the private lives of consenting adults engaged in any form of sexual or romantic relationship.

In other words: stop convicting men of raping women that were obviously begging for it.

We oppose any state authority over or interference in the commercialization of sexual relations between consenting adults.

This is deliberately mischaracterizing when feminists discuss objectification and criticize those who engage in it as calling for government censorship. While there may be some that do (for example, popular MRA bugbear Andrea Dworkin, who considered it a necessary evil for gender equality), most feminists value free speech and don't want government censorship. Of course, to them, it's, like, all a conspiracy by The Man to oppress us, my fellow brothas.

References

Categories: Men's rights, Extreme Wingnuttery, Sexism, Internet hate sites, Conspiracy theories