Pandagon’s Marcotte on the Influence Paul Elam and MRAs Have on Actual Men’s Advocacy

I am not the only one who sees through the False Rape Society and Paul Elam’s bullshit. Amanda Marcotte takes on the Good Men Project’s founder, Tom Matlack, whose mind has been apparently poisoned by the likes of Paul Elam. It appears that Matlack’s style of confrontation is just like Elam’s:

When you make a bunch of baseless, unevidenced, generalizing arguments about a group of people—in this case, feminists and women as a group—and when challenged, cannot and will not provide evidence, you’re not making argument. You’re simply being prejudiced. Tom is whining that feminists don’t feel empathy for “men”, even though I quoted men extensively in my rebuttal to him and demonstrated ample empathy and understanding of men—starting with the understanding that “men” are not a monolith. He’s got nothing. He’s just spouting sexist blather and, when called on it, whining about meanie feminists instead of proving his arguments or hell, even giving a specific example of what the fuck he’s talking about when he accuses women as a group of being so mean and unaccepting of men.

I highly encourage reading Marcotte’s article over at Pandagon. Flame on.

Female soldiers more likely to be raped by fellow soldiers than killed in battle

“Rape within the US military has become so widespread that it is estimated that a female soldier in Iraq is more likely to be attacked by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire.”

But remember what Paul Elam and his MRA friends tell you: Rape culture doesn’t exist and if it did it would have nothing to do with significant patterns of male sexual violence.

Also from the article, the main reason why I do not believe the False Rape Society and the MRA claim that they want to build a better life for men: “But military rape is not only a women’s issue. According to the Veterans Affairs Office, 37% of the sexual trauma cases reported last year were men. ‘Men are even more isolated than women following rape,’ Bhagwati says. ‘Because it has an even bigger social stigma.’” Here we see that if the FRS and MRAs wanted to make a better life for men, they would also come to the aid of male sexual assault victims. But that is not the point of the FRS. These groups exist because they are rooted in a fear and hatred for female power, they believe only women are capable of wrong, and the fact that rape is harder to get away with these days seems to make them really upset.

Hat-tip to Pharyngula for featuring the Guardian story this morning.

The So-Called False Rape Society Attacks Me (Update: Apology to Paul Elam!)

From the False Rape Society

 

[Update! I have apologized to Paul Elam. When I searched the domain names of the MRA sites I am writing about, I must have confused one of Elams other domains, such as register-her.com, for the FRS site. A sincere apology to Mr. Elam is in order! I will edit this article to reflect that, and leave a record of this mistake in this post.]

This was getting cluttered and confusing, so I moved all updates to the bottom of the original post. Thanks!
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I decided to create a Google alert today to find out which of my articles people are talking about and what they’re saying, a tip I read up on on another blog. The first alert it sent me is a doozy. I’ll get to that.

I had stumbled upon one of these atrocious pits of misogyny, the False Rape Society(FRS), a group that insists that it wants to help men who are falsely accused of rape. However, upon closer examination, the first clue of the illegitimacy of this claim is that the FRS is closely affiliated with such sites as “The Happy Misogynist”, “A Voice for Men”, and other sites dedicated to tearing female-bodied persons down and trying to erase their rapes and very existence as survivors. [See updates at the bottom for a lot more info on these sites, their ties, what they say.]

Don’t forget this winner, the MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) Forums, featuring the article “A Tale of Two Skanks” on the front page. These are people who celebrate domestic violence and rape. Scum. This site is directly linked to register-her.com[owned by Paul Elam who owns the FRS domain], the site which publicly prints women’s information in an attempt to invoke violence upon them, which I told you about in this article.

The False Rape Society site also explicitly states that rape victims are not victims until the government says so, and painstakingly scours the internet for any articles that can cast women who are raped as liars, one and all, thus feeding into these insecure rape-apologists’ fantasies about who women are.

So I dropped a little comment, just a quick drive-by hoping to agitate them into seeing what I’ve said about MRAs in the past, maybe get a few of them to pull their heads out of their asses. I said this:

Snip Em

MRAs are up in arms over this PSA, which does a fantastic and hilarious job of capturing attention and promoting awareness for pet spaying and neutering:

‘>

I nominate myself for Bigot of the Year!

Look! Women are all liars!

Note: Check out manboobz.com for more background into the MRAs (Men’s Rights Advocates), PUAs (Pick-Up Artists), and MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way). A lot of it is hilarious, a lot of it is downright disturbing. No, disturbing doesn’t do it justice. You just have to see for yourself. (Thanks to reader Crys for reminding me how relevant that site is to this post.)

There is a ridiculous site called register-her.com, a poorly constructed and factually challenged site for man-babies who are convinced that women are all disgusting slime (unless they agree with the man-babies, then it’s all about respect!) They use shoddy retrofitting of data from studies that they don’t understand (more on that in the letter I wrote to them below.) I warn you, this is one of those sites that claims that women who report their rapes are liars, they say that “most DV (domestic violence) is initiated by women,” and use the word “bigot” to describe empowered women and men who fight back against their bullshit.

They have a publicly viewable “registry,” a patently offensive place where they post private information of women and men who they target, that any creep can post to and any creep can read. Literally anything goes here–I can just sign anyone up and put them in the “registry” under labels such as, “Sexual Predator,” or “Rapist” or the especially self-centered category of “Killer” for women who have the audacity to fight back and even kill their abusers. They also demand that women receive stronger sentences than men when they kill their abusers. (In case you are wondering, I think that when we create a society that creates perpetual chronic domestic violence situations, and women so often go completely ignored in being abused, we shouldn’t really be surprised when someone kills their rapist or torturer, whom they sleep with nightly. I’m not saying that’s the right answer, but we must also blame ourselves for not creating an alternative.)

Anyhow, I went to the “Register New Offenders” page and put my full name, state and RtM’s web address along with this message explaining why I wish to be inducted:

I wish to induct myself into the registry, as I am an outspoken bigot against male-dominated society and relationships. I wish to smash the current social arrangement that gives overwhelming power to men, and overwhelming disempowerment to female-bodied persons. I believe that sites like these are the result of men who are unwilling to take responsibility for the behaviors they engage in; and these men and women generally feel fear and disgust when faced with the idea of female sexual enjoyment, female social power, and female bodies that do not conform to contemporary “beauty” standards. I believe the women who join forces with men on this site are enabling their own denigration and disempowerment, but it is their place to decide those allegiances and not my place to judge them as persons, however much I disagree with them.

I believe that this site is uncritical and hackneyed, based on poor interpretations of research—conclusions which are actually refuted in the very studies you cite. For instance, the introduction of the Kanin study you cite [PDF] on your front page definitively refutes the notion that false rape allegations are a social phenomenon and states they are rather the product of individual situations. Says the Kanin report which you cite: “False rape allegations are not the consequence of a gender-linked aberration, as frequently claimed, but reflect impulsive and desperate efforts to cope with personal and social stress situations.”

So here we see that register-her.com writers seek to retrofit data to justify their thinly-veiled animosity towards women who reject them or have more power than they are supposed to be allowed to have.

It is therefore that I would find my induction into this ludicrous “registry” to be a badge of honor, as I nominate myself for entry.

Ben Fenton
Writer, Resisting the Milieu