Friday, October 24, 2014

‘Men’s rights’ is a false cause

An article in an online magazine recently referenced a fellow named Paul Elam and the misogynistic web site he maintains. It’s devoted to the utterly fabricated cause of “men’s rights,” and it pretends that men – primarily white men – are besieged by evil feminist forces who want to oppress men. Primarily white men.

So, I went to check out Paul Elam’s web site. I didn't know whether to laugh at the absurdity of its content or cry because this bozo pretends to represent “men.” The web site is a monument to misogyny. As nearly as I can tell, according to Elam, womankind is out to oppress and dominate mankind. Woman, Elam would have us believe, wants to take her babies away from the man who so generously gifted his sperm to her just because he's an insufferable asshole. Elam admits that he was frightened out of his career as an addiction counselor by a woman who wanted to, as he puts it, "shove (the male clients') macho bullshit down their throats."

What he completely missed -- and this actually makes him pretty much unsuited for that line of work, so it's good that he ran away from it like a scared boy -- is the fact that macho bullshit is the crux of almost all male addicts' problems. Elam's too dumb to know that his colleague didn't want to take men's balls away, she just wanted them to stop thinking with them.

I don’t suppose anyone will ever be able to explain it to him, but Elam’s world view can never result in constructive thought or dialog because it is shot through with what I call “little boy syndrome.” This is the tendency of men to classify all strife as an us-vs-them struggle. As I scrolled through, I found horror story after horror story about men who allegedly suffered at the hands of crazy-bitch girlfriends and wives.

What I did not find was the inclusiveness that women’s rights movements invariably have. Websites urging people to join the effort to eliminate misogyny, which is not confined to violence but is a cultural failure to value female humans equally with males, almost always include acknowledgement that women are not alone in suffering oppression from dominating males in our society. And they always seek to enlist the help of men – indeed, some even make it primarily the responsibility of men – to change the societal rules that devalue the lives and minds of women.

Aside from the dubious credibility of the anecdotal horror stories that are the staple of Elam’s website, the overall tone is a loud “thunk!” I was raised to believe that “fair” doesn't always mean “equal,” and equality isn't always fair. Fair, I was taught, is better. While it is absolutely fair to pay two people with the same qualifications the same wage to do the same job (equality being the only fair thing in this case) it is ridiculously unfair to equate rape of men with rape of women as a problem in our society; the numbers simply don’t bear out the equivalency.

And in some things the physiological differences between men and women have to be considered to even approach equality. When was the last time you went to a major sporting event and saw equal-length lines in front of the restrooms? Major venue designers have finally figured out that, because of the design of their bodies, women need a lot more restroom space than men. It isn't funny, it isn't degrading, it isn't overly empowering, and it isn't a weakness. It is the reality of our physical beings and we need to recognize it and move on.

I’ll admit that women can be abusive and downright hostile to men, but I gotta’ tell ya’, that hostility is usually the result of abuse at the hands of … that’s right, men. Aileen Wuornos killed six men in cold blood, falsely accusing all of them of trying to rape her. That’s one angry woman. Of course, being raped as a child can make a girl pretty damn angry – or a poet laureate.

But these are extreme and rare anecdotes that Elam's website uses. While a handful of men suffer injury and even death at the hands of women they know and love -- Phil Hartman's murder by his wife in 1998 is an example -- these cases are so rare that they make big news. Besides, Brynn Omdahl didn't kill Hartman because she was a woman, she killed him because she was a deranged drug addict. Elam may want to delve into the history of what made her so. No one else has deigned to do so,  G'head, search the Internet until your brain turns to mush -- you'll find no account, credible or otherwise, of Omdahl's early life. One can only speculate about how such a gifted woman came by that lethal monkey on her back.

Elam’s website meticulously chronicles how every defense of women's dignity is an assault on men's rights. Some examples:

  • Domestic violence issues are twisted by women's advocates to be primarily a problem of man-on-woman violence.
  • Women banding together to claim basic human rights constitutes a conspiracy to deprive men of their civil rights.
  • Civil rights for women is really all about women being more comfortable as lesbians, especially after they've been bred and had all the children they want to have.
  • Women standing up to men in public media are actually ball-busting bitches who want to muzzle men so they can carry out their emasculating-lesbian-child-stealing agenda.

Elam's whole philosophy reminds me of the pathetic mewling of white supremacists who bemoan the passing of the old order because they no longer have an iron grip on power by virtue of their “race.” The privileged – the white male Protestant Christians of America – claim to feel threatened, pretend to be in “danger” of minority status because the people they have so long oppressed are learning where to find the levers of power.

As a man I’m here to tell you, we men are doing just fine, thank you very much. We've learned to think with that organ that is designed for thinking, and let our balls dangle stupidly from our bellies, performing the one thing they were designed for -- to distinguish us  from women. And I sure as hell don’t need Paul Elam or anyone else to fight for my masculine rights.

5 comments:

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  3. "Jeff Rice is a former newspaper journalist currently teaching English part-time at community colleges."

    Well if this is an example of your "journalism" Mr. Rice, I can see why you now teach part-time at at community colleges. No citations, no quotes from Paul Elam and not even the slightest attempt to understand the men's rights issues that AVFM speaks about. Not a whiff of objectivity is necessary in your brand of "journalism" apparently.

    Just ten minutes on AVFM is enough to confirm that many of its members are female. AVFM also has writers and members from all ethnic backgrounds, religions and sexual orientations. It is about as diverse as you could possibly get. It also has branches in different countries all over the world and networks with other men's rights organisations in too many countries to mention. To call Paul Elam a racist or a Misogynist would just invoke laughter from anyone who has ever had dealings with him or his website.

    But you wouldn't know any of that because, be honest with yourself, you didn't actually investigate anything at all. You just wrote this piece based on your own pre-conceived views, firmly grounded in the dogma of feminist ideology. There is nothing blinder than an ideologue. It's probably just as well that you gave up "journalism."

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    1. I spent a helluvalot more time than ten minutes slogging through that dreck! It was what I found (or didn't find) AFTER the first ten minutes that prompted me to write this.

      What Paul Elam advocates is the very definition of misogyny.

      And your ad hominem attacks on my journalism and teaching abilities undermine whatever argument you might have had.

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