In which I criticize the denizens of the manosphere for impersonating an organization working to end violence against women.

In order to get more attention for their woman-hating agenda, men's rights activists (MRAs) are willing to game, manipulate, and infiltrate social justice movements.

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Not content to stew in their own soup of misogynistic feminist-hating rage, men’s rights activists (MRAs) are trying to expand their ranks and draw unsuspecting people to their cause. And in order to get more attention for their woman-hating agenda, they are willing to game, manipulate, and infiltrate social justice movements.

For those not in the know, MRAs are the bottom-feeders of an online community that is already so virulently sexist that any woman who dares speak out in favor of feminism, equality, or social justice is immediately targeted for attacks, including rape threats on social media and offline terrorist threats of mass murder.

They are slack-jawed yokels who are so convinced that feminism is out to get them that they band together on message boards and other online forums, working themselves up into an unhealthy misogynistic lather.

They don’t view feminism for what it is in its most basic iteration—the desire for equality between the sexes. Oh no! They view feminism as a hate group populated by a bunch of hairy-legged misandrists who would like nothing more than to KILL ALL MEN and dance on their graves while wearing long flowing skirts and twirling around like Stevie Nicks.

They are a special breed of insecure degenerate assholes who believe that feminists are the devil and who blame women for all of their problems.

These grievances range from men’s comparatively high rates of suicide to prison rape to unfair treatment in family court. Many of their concerns are valid: Yes, prison rape is a problem; yes, fathers are sometimes treated unfairly in custody battles. Drawing attention to these issues is not unreasonable. Advocating for solutions to these problems is not unreasonable. What is unreasonable, however, is proclaiming that the cause of every single grievance is Women with a capital “W.”

But that is the attitude that pervades the so-called manosphere: Women, feminists in particular, are the root of all evil.

It’s not that women have been subjugated by men since the dawn of time, and feminism seeks a little balance in the order of things—to liberate women from the jackbooted thugs of patriarchy. No! It’s men, primarily white cishet men, who are the real victims. Their oppressors? Feminists, of course.

These thoroughly oppressed men loudly proclaim their victimhood from online cesspools like A Voice for Men—a website so chock-full of misogyny that you might want to douse your brain in Lysol before reading it—while, ironically, damning feminists for stereotyping all women as victims.

So hate-filled is A Voice for Men that the Southern Poverty Law Center flagged it as a website that spreads misogyny. According to SPLC,

A Voice for Men is essentially a mouthpiece for its editor, Paul Elam, who proposes to “expose misandry [hatred of men] on all levels in our culture.” Elam tosses down the gauntlet in his mission statement: “AVfM regards feminists, manginas [a derisive term for weak men], white knights [a similar derisive term, for males who identify as feminists] and 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 clansmen [sic], skinheads, neo Nazis or other purveyors of hate.”

Lovely, isn’t it?

Not satisfied simply to create websites dedicated to the denigration and hatred of women, these vile reprobates of the manosphere, led by Paul Elam himself, have taken it a step further: They have co-opted the White Ribbon campaign, which works to end violence against women and girls.

And you thought MRAs couldn’t get any worse.

The White Ribbon Campaign, according to its website, is the “world’s largest movement of men and boys working to end violence against women and girls, promote gender equity, healthy relationships, and a new vision of masculinity.” The Campaign asks men “to wear white ribbons as a pledge to never commit, condone, or remain silent about violence against women and girls.”

The campaign was started by Canadian men in the wake of the 1989 massacre at École Polytechnique in Montreal, during which Marc Lépine walked into the school, proclaimed that he was fighting feminists, and murdered 14 women. The White Ribbon Campaign has since spread to over 60 countries around the world, most of them featuring websites associated with a particular country, such as whiteribbon.ca, whiteribbon.org.au, whiteribboncampaign.co.uk, and so on.

But presumably because Elam and his merry band of misogynist miscreants think the White Ribbon Campaign is run by a bunch of “manginas” and “white knights”—terms that MRAs use to describe men who don’t think that treating women like shit is the pathway to liberation—they decided to set up a fake White Ribbon website (whiteribbon.org) in order to divert money from the real White Ribbon Campaign and to promote bullshit anti-feminist propaganda.

Elam’s bastard website proclaims that it is a campaign to “end violence against everyone.” That doesn’t seem like such a bad idea, unless you know who Elam is and the vitriolic crap that he peddles.

As Jill Filipovic pointed out in an article for Cosmopolitan that you really should read, last year, Elam declared October to be “Bash a Violent Bitch Month”:

I’d like to make it the objective for the remainder of this month, and all the Octobers that follow, for men who are being attacked and physically abused by women—to beat the living shit out of 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 till the smugness of beating on someone because you know they won’t fight back drains from their nose with a few million red corpuscles. And then make them clean up the mess.

Does that sound like the sort of fellow you want running a campaign aimed at ending violence against everyone? I didn’t think so.

Elam, of course, claimed that his diatribe was satire, but if you listen closely, you can hear Jonathan Swift arising from the dead to yell out a resounding, “Fuck you!” before returning to his permanent dirt nap.

To add insult to fuckery, Elam’s fake White Ribbon website is taking donations that will not be directed to any group dedicated to combating violence against men. Because why do anything to help people when you can simply line your own pockets?

Needless to say, the real White Ribbon campaign is not amused by Elam’s antics:

Today, White Ribbon (www.whiteribbon.ca) became aware that a “so-called” men’s rights group has launched a copycat campaign articulating their archaic views and denials about the realities of gender-based violence. Their vile sentiments—which include disparaging comments about women’s shelters and victim blaming survivors of rape—are completely incongruent with our values at White Ribbon. Their misguided attempts to discredit others only make clear the extent to which they see the success of our equality-driven, evidence-based, ally-focused work on gender justice as a real threat to their ill-informed, isolated views on this issue. This latest example is clear evidence of their insincerity and lack of commitment to developing compassionate solutions for the issues they claim to care about. It also showcases their real focus: attacking, harassing and directing anger towards others. … Allies and supporters: Do not to be fooled by this copycat campaign. We are exploring all of our options, but we will not be engaging with this group in a public screaming match. They can remain a shrill minority. We will continue to engage with the vast majority of men who believe in gender justice, and want to be part of the solution.

Look, there is a way to talk about violence against men without shitting on efforts by men—like the White Ribbon Campaign—to end violence against women.

There’s a way to talk about violence against men without shitting on women who, despite claims to the contrary by MRA idiots, suffer from domestic violence at rates far exceeding men.

There’s even a way to criticized domestic violence advocacy’s gendered focus on women, and to push for more funding for men’s shelters, without manipulating facts and statistics in order to cast men as the victims of evil haters.

But the denizens of the manosphere don’t really care about combating violence against men or women. All they care about is telling women to shut the fuck up and know their place.

The bottom line is that MRAs hate women, and feminists in particular. And those that don’t, because I’m sure some MRA will show up in the comments section of this post complaining that I have made generalized statements about them, are useful idiots for the ones that do. And this latest stunt—diverting attention and money from an organization working to end violence against women while doing absolutely nothing to advocate for the end of violence against men—is proof of that.