Written by I just had quite the interesting interaction in the comments over at A Voice for Men. They recently put my “Rape Accusation Culture” article in their “Mega Featured” category on the front page, apparently overlooking a shot I took at the left.
Here is the quote that caused the stir;
It requires some ideological acrobatics, but that’s never been difficult for the American left, has it? Contradictory beliefs are part and parcel of all statist ideology, and so it’s not difficult to believe such contradictions would be held within a policy agenda.
Regular readers of my blog likely find this little tidbit rather tame. At AVfM however, there are a number of Men’s Rights Advocates s who still for whatever reason identify as leftists and have some unbelievable affinity for State coercion. Perhaps understandably, the folks who run AVfM don’t want to alienate these guys.
One such leftist who calls himself Jack Strawb took issue with my commentary, and decided to respond at AVfM as follows.
“It requires some ideological acrobatics, but that’s never been difficult for the American left, has it?”
A promising article until you indulged yourself with this kind of poisonous nonsense. For every example you believe you have, I don’t doubt I can counterpose an example of the right engaging in “ideological acrobatics.” Was it really worth taking this particular swipe?
By all means, though, continue to marginalize, insult, and demonize the left within the MRM, because that’s what we really need right now.
I replied to Jack as I usually do, frankly and unapologetically.
I realize that there are lefties in the MRM, and in previous articles published here I’ve toned down my utter contempt for the left. Truth of the matter is though, I can’t imagine what use you could possibly be to men, while you perpetually seek to further empower the State. The State is the enemy of the human race, and men in particular.
No self respecting male should even acknowledge the State as a legitimate institution, much less give it more control over his life.
Well, this didn’t go over well at all. In addition to being uninvited from submitting content to AVfM by Dead Esmay, Paul Elam chimed in with this lovely little tirade.
Here is what I think. The glue that holds this movement together is that we are not stupid enough to engage in partisan bitching matches.
Unfortunately, I can’t read every article or even some of them before they are posted any more. I would not have let this pass.
In this case, I am cautioning you, Mr. Cantwell. You fired a partisan shot and you got bit for it, and for good reason. And now you seem determined to take it straight to FOX NEWS/CNN brainwashed political bullshit.
Not here.
For the record, my political leanings are probably a lot closer to yours than Mr. Strawbs. Doesn’t matter. If our readers want to see this endless low level political bickering, they can turn on their TVs and watch it between beer and car commercials.
Dean Esmay went on to suggest I move to Somalia, as I write this he’s probably trying to figure out who will build the roads. So much for not engaging in “partisan” bitching matches…
Now, I’d prefer to keep submitting content to AVfM, so I’ve bowed out of the comment flamewar that’s presently ongoing, but this requires some response, so here it is. If AVfM doesn’t want my content after this, well, I’ve been expelled from finer institutions for better reasons.
Liberals Don’t Care About Men, or Women – They Care About The State
There’s a reason we always hear things like “war on women”, “gender pay gap”, and other feminist nonsense coming from Democrats. The reason should be obvious, but let me spell it out for you – the left doesn’t suffer any particular attachment to reality. It doesn’t matter how many times central economic planning results in the the starvation and violent deaths of millions of people, they just keep on insisting it’s going to solve all the world’s problems. They continue to spout off about how democracy is going to protect the rights of minorities, as if those words even belong in the same paragraph. Be it banning guns in the name of preventing violence, only for State agents to hunt down and murder peaceful gun owners, or picking up a Nobel Peace Prize on your way to escalate what’s quickly becoming World War III, the American left’s detachment from reality, and aversion to responsibility, makes the religious right’s obsession with a non-existent deity look downright rational by comparison. At least prayer does nothing, governments actually harm.
This is not to say the Republican party is a while lot better. Paul’s claim of “partisan bitching” and “Fox News/CNN brainwashed political bullshit” is absolute nonsense. That article, like all my articles, is anti-State. I’m no more interested in Jeb Bush or Chris Christie than I am in Hillary Clinton. As far as I’m concerned, people should have been voting from the rooftops a long time ago.
In Search of a Movement Tethered to Reality
The nice thing about the men’s rights movement, in contrast to feminism, is its rationality. The answer to the “gender pay gap” issue is just sound economics and facts. We don’t need to make hysterical claims about bigotry or other nonsense, we don’t need to refer to the bible or “God’s will” we just say what’s going on and rational people see through the bullshit. They might be in the minority, but they’re out there.
Take any issue from birth control “access” to “rape culture”, and some simple analyzation of the data should resolve it for intelligent people who are tethered to an objective reality. Were the MRM just feminism with facial hair, a reversal of feminist hysterics favoring men, I’d not be a part of it. Alright, probably no shortage of facial hair in feminism, but you get the point.
More than I care about men’s issues, liberty, or atheism, I care about objective reality. That so many people are willing to accept any number of interpretations to a set of data troubles me because it causes immeasurable suffering in the world. That popularity is so often the arbiter of right and wrong in this world, I truly believe will lead to the extinction of mankind if not corrected.
I oppose religion, the State, and feminists for the same reasons – they are false.
Feminism and the State
Feminists will make some claims as to the State’s oppression of women in the past. Some of them are true, the majority are baseless, but more importantly they ignore the reality of the State. The State has certainly abused women, but not because they were women. The State abused women, because women are people, and the State is nothing if not an abuser of people.
That is not some new malfunction, or some bug that got repaired in a recent update, that is a feature. The feature, really, it is the nature of the machine itself, that is its design. The State uses violence to accomplish all of its goals, and if it didn’t, we would call it something other than the State. What distinguishes the State from market entities is compulsion through threat of force, and pretending otherwise is the adult equivalent of having an imaginary friend.
Thus if one opposes the abuse of people – be they men, women, black, white, or otherwise – it is incumbent upon that person to oppose the State.
I only began submitting content to AVfM after realizing that feminism was infiltrating the libertarian movement. I found myself combating this plague in anti-State circles, and at first I was confused by it. I found myself arguing with people who called themselves libertarians, repeating statist gender propaganda, and making every possible effort to torture Austrian economics to fit their fanatical lies. What I came to realize early on in this, was that feminism’s incursion into libertarian circles was an intentional sabotage, and that libertarianism and the Men’s Rights Movement not only have a lot to offer one another, but are inextricably linked.
The State offers feminism an endless stream of money to promote misinformation and demonize men. There are very simple reasons for this.
The State cannot stand up to scrutiny. There is literally not a single thing the State can do that wouldn’t be outperformed by a competitive market. So the folks who rely on the power of that institution would far prefer to see people chasing convenient boogeymen, than getting to the root of any actual problems. The State is that root in more cases than not, and these folks don’t want anybody hacking at it.
While men and women alike are hopping from one foot to the next trying to decipher the never ending stream of lies produced by feminists, the State raises taxes, wages wars, and seizes greater control over the economy. The “gender wage gap” myth feminists are always whining about is nothing but propaganda for central planning of wages, and that’s why it is usually touted by people who also want to raise the minimum wage too. Complaining about Matt Taylor’s shirt and every other excuse made for women not making greater advances in the professional world, is propaganda for State regulation of hiring practices. “Street Harassment” is a State power grab to regulate the words people utter to each other on the street. Find me a feminist campaign, and I’ll find you an attempted expansion of government authority. The pattern is not difficult to spot if one bothers to take a look.
All this runs the risk of creating an extremely pissed off population of people who may at some point realize they are getting screwed over by the violent sociopaths who claim to represent them. Men being the one’s who traditionally fight revolutions, feminizing them en masse, making them fear for their freedom and safety, disarming them, and depriving them of resources, is about as sound an investment as an empire could hope to make. Women most certainly aren’t going to pick up the guns and do it themselves, especially not while the State is bending over backwards to benefit them at the expense of men.
This all being before our eyes, how can one take seriously the notion, that further empowering the State can benefit any class of people, men in particular? Will higher taxes, more business regulation, greater government involvement in the family, and gun control make men more free? More prosperous? Will it bring about “gender equality”? No. It most certainly will not. It will do what it has always done.
Promote misery and death.
So if Paul Elam, Dean Esmay, and the other fine folks over at AVfM want to leave liberals in la la land by neglecting to address the very real political implications involved in the struggle for men’s rights – that’s fine. Their website, their rules. If they don’t want me hitting homeruns on the front page of their website, I’ll just keep on publishing them here and letting other fine publications syndicate them. Publish or don’t publish whatever you want, nothing will ever change the objective reality that liberalism is inextricably linked to the expansion of State power, or that the State is the number one preventable cause of human death and suffering in the world.
That being the case, those of us who care more for our fellow man than for our Alexa rankings, will keep up our opposition to it. If that upsets some people, then maybe those people need to be upset.
I am in desperate need of money. So if you appreciate the work I do, please consider donating, or advertising here.
Follow me on, UStream, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Subscribe via email and never miss another post!
Nicely put Chris, frankly when I hear people say “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar” when it comes to politics I simply laugh. At one point when I started heavily following politics I felt the same way but when you look around you the left has its attack dogs as does the right. Who not only attack each other have turned their collective sights and attacks on libertarians since Ron Paul’s presidential campaigns. Libertarians tried to be the nice guy in the room but its clear its more effective to attack libs and cons just as hard as they do us. At least IMO
The only thing I might suggest is that before you write for an activist publication you might want to take the time to at least read their mission statement.
In real world, subjective terms, the entire “left vs right” paradigm is in la la land Mr. Cantwell. Every component of our political system furthers expansion of government control, especially where it concerns men’s rights, and has for a long, long time. I think you pretty much have to be in la la land yourself not to know that.
That is what fostered our mission and editorial policies, and why we circumvent the soundbite rich and substance poor arena of modern political discourse — by remaining largely apolitical and focusing on changing the cultural dialog.
Like it or not, that is our way of doing things.
You are welcome to submit your work to AVFM at any time, under the same conditions that we apply to everyone else. If you cannot do that in good conscience, I fully understand and wish you the best of luck.
Paul Elam
Men’s rights issues are directly linked to politics…Much of men’s rights that are being usurped is directly because of politics, politics of both the left and right paradigm… How can a men’s rights advocacy group not take a stance on an issue that affect men’s rights most? Arguably statism is why we need places like AVfM, not feminism…Feminism is powerless and meaningless without the state…
I agree with you. Thing is, gynocentrism is powerful even without the state. It is highly arguable that gynocentrism is nearly impossible to change, but to the extent that we can, we can impact feminism and the state.
Paul, I think you’re right in some ways and going in the wrong direction in others. Gynocentrism has been around forever, but feminism has not. I think human nature sort of allows for some good gynocentrism. Putting women on a pedestal is what gets men fired up for producing– as I’m sure you know that married men make more money than non-married men. So many of our natural instincts are tied up with competition for mates and status that we can’t get rid of men working hard to accumulate wealth and attract a partner.
This also benefits society as a whole in the right conditions– free markets. Every man who wants more for himself (and his family) must first produce something that someone else wants. An abundance is created that can even be shared with the poorest in society.
Then came along leftist identity politics, communism, social justice, progressivism, etc.. These things are inextricably linked to the feminism we see today. Its underpinnings are the idiotic notions people have about collectivism and the need for class warfare. They seek to strip away the rights of individuals and place privileges on certain groups to the detriment of other groups. These leftist mind worms ARE the problem with feminism.
The right side of the spectrum (traditionalists) have used gynocentrism as an excuse to reduce women’s choices, historically. Because women are so good and pure, they must be forced to remain that way. If feminism ever had a point, it would be fighting this idea. But it’s gone way past that, now. They’ve sided with the radical left, and they are pushing our gynocentrism buttons to dismantle individual and property rights. They will kill the goose that lays the golden eggs (that is, they will put an end to liberty in people and markets and kill the one mechanism that has brought enough prosperity to allow them to bitch constantly instead of working every second not to starve.)
The end game of feminism isn’t a rich, beautiful society where women are on top and men are in the gutter. Because of their leftism, the end game is a society where everyone is starving, many of them in re-education camps, and the only path out of desperation is having connections inside the “party”.
I agreed with most of what you said up to that quote, which I think is missing something.
While ostensibly correct, the more women’s choices were narrowed, so we the choices of men. While women were “forced” to be good an pure, men were “forced” into deadly work in order to take care of them. This was obviously beneficial to women, as it was to a small class of men exempt from those hardships.
It was good to “society at large” only in as far as we look at society without considering most men that lived in it. It is hard to enjoy the fruits of energy when you are dead at 45 from black lung.
The other factor that needs more consideration is that all those “limited choices and purity” fpr women came protection, provision and privilege on levels most men could never dream of. They were too busy working (and dying) to make that happen to even think of it.
In that sense, if feminism did have a purpose, it was ultimately the liberation of men, which we are now starting to see the first inklings of happening.
Politically. the closest label you could put on me is libertarian. I believe in a completely free market and that competition, largely between men, will still drive a healthy economy and provide a decent standard of living for the most people.
I also don’t have a problem with women in that equation. So far, they aren’t. So far, what most women have done is flood the workforce in low paying, soft professions and screamed discrimination when that naturally resulted in lower pay. Rather than confront that reality, men from right and left tolerate and/or enable it.
Personally. I see no problem with women filling as many occupational body bags as men, and I think the technology is available to prevent us from suffering economic decline as a result.
But as I look at politics across the spectrum, I don’t see us headed that way. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I don’t disagree with you on the limiting of men’s choices. I just didn’t expand on that. I’m in the boat with Warren Farrell that traditionalist attitudes restricted choices for both men and women, and the future of solid relationships between genders will come from both of them being more free to choose and less restricted by society imposing obligations. I think feminists already burned up all the high expectations we had for women (is there anything they can’t get away with?), but men got left behind.
My entire point when I brought up the right is that feminists should mostly only take offense to their traditionalist attitudes about women, but instead they absorb marxist dogma and attack themes that are not exactly right wing, but aren’t leftist either, like individual rights. Their “anti-right”ness pushes them all the way to the left, while they ignore the 3rd option, which is none of the above. The right does this, too. I think you see this seesaw for what it is, and obviously don’t want partisan bickering being the norm on your site. But Cantwell doesn’t see his anti-leftism as pro-rightism. It’s part of a rational, pro-liberty philosophy that recognizes leftist policy as being anti-human and anti-prosperity in the same way feminism is.
If the philosophical discussion on rights and the proper role of government in achieving the goals of male liberation aren’t part of AVfM, then, as Cantwell said, it will be taken elsewhere. It needs to be talked about. I think AVfM has the most credibility of all the MRM organisations, so it would be good to see it there.
Where do things like conquest, colonialism, and destroying 3rd world countries and grabbing their resources fit in, in your scheme? Surely that was before Leftist politics kicked in.
There is a degree of truth to feminist notion of Toxic Masculinity. The very male-on-male competition that is beneficial, is a double-edged sword that results in excesses. Status-Seeking at high-levels leaves many others in ruins. White Knightery is what makes men form mobs, and beat up other men falsely accused of sexual harassment, rape, etc.
And MGTOW YouTuber Stardusk has demonstrated in his videos using Eastern countries that the problem runs deeper than just “collectivist”/progressive politics. As soon as Eastern countries started getting wealthier, plenty of women started ditching their husbands and started exploiting their sexuality for bigger better deal. Many men are destroyed even in Eastern countries by pro-women laws and social policies. It took no “patriarchy theory” to get there. Just a simple appeal to White Knightery.
As such the MRM is largely about raising cultural awareness of these aspects of human nature. Politics will matter when significant numbers of men and women come together.
Havent we have had 50+ years of active libertarianism, and still they have next to no impact on politics? The MRM can safely wait for libertarianism to get some serious traction, before it decides on its own political leanings.
Astrokid,
conquest, colonialism, and “destroying 3rd world countries” are done by governments, not libertarians, and not individual men. The problem with leftist ideology (as I pointed out) is the idea of “collectivism” or “nationalism”. They are kind of the same thing, but leftists like the first variety where the right wing praises the latter. All conquest by nation states is made possible by the popular lie that people owe a debt to the society they are born into, and governments own the people in that society to some degree, and that all of this is okay. This mentality is something libertarians seek to challenge.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, but many libertarians see left/right ideology as two sides of the same coin: collectivist athoritarianism. The right wing has streaks of individualist philosophy in it, though, while the left is more typically anti-individual. This is why there is no libertarian schism in the democratic party compared to the republican one.
I don’t know why I need to explain this, but I said SOME traditional gynocentrism has positive results in FREE MARKET situations. There’s also the fact that we are most likely naturally wired to be gynocentric to some degree as a species, so we cannot make it a mission to eradicate it.
You put up a bunch of examples where people appeal to gynocentrism to use government force or other attacks against individuals, and act like that refutes something I’ve said? It hasn’t. I never said all “White Knightery” was a good thing. I’ve never defended using violence against peaceful people. And I never said we should stop telling people that they have biases against men. I simply pointed out that it was important to see the collectivist streak in mainstream feminism and attack it for what it is– a blight to humanity.
Men’s rights only matter if you aren’t a white guy. War on white guys!
Paul, any attachment your readers have for the “left” or the “right” is an irrational attachment they have made connecting their identities to one side or another within a false paradigm. Anyone who attacks “left” or “right” will expose this irrationality and present a wonderful opportunity for it to be dealt with. Because you believe that “Every component of our political system furthers expansion of government control, especially where it concerns men’s rights…” perhaps these irrational “left-right” belief systems should be brought out into the open and addressed to prevent any further growth of government power that always results from these pointless left-right political conflicts and to assist men in moving away from these meaningless collective identities towards robust individual identities. Why give male irrationality with respect to political systems and the resulting collective identities a pass when you give no such pass to comparable female irrationality with respect to feminism (the “her-him” paradigm)?
What you are suggesting is precisely what we have been doing all along, as evidenced by the OP here and my response.
“In real world, subjective terms, the entire “left vs right” paradigm is in la la land Mr. Cantwell. Every component of our political system furthers expansion of government control, especially where it concerns men’s rights, and has for a long, long time. I think you pretty much have to be in la la land yourself not to know that.”
He obviously does understand this:
From Chris’ article: “This is not to say the Republican party is a while lot better. Paul’s claim of “partisan bitching” and “Fox News/CNN brainwashed political bullshit” is absolute nonsense. That article, like all my articles, is anti-State. I’m no more interested in Jeb Bush or Chris Christie than I am in Hillary Clinton.”
He’s not playing into the left vs right banter at all, he just pointed out specific problems with one side. This does not mean he’s therefore “picking sides”.
Chris did not actually write for any activist publication other than his own. The other activist publication merely duplicated and linked to the original article that Chris wrote for his own site.
To be clear, I had an author’s account on AVfM and manually submitted content to them for approval and publishing. They have not been pulling content from this site on their own.
To Paul Elam and the rest – Your attempt to “bring together” people from both sides of the isle and increase your the numbers in the MRA by welcoming Leftist ideologues, brings to mind a certain wooden horse.
You can discuss gynocentrism and try to shrug off the reality, but the portion of the feminist movement today which works not toward equality, but purely to the detriment of men and elevation of women to a superior moral and protected place, is entirely dependent on Leftist ideology and its compatibility with modern government.
Leftists / statists call on the state to solve their problems, and if you did share views (as you say you likely do) with any Libertarian, you would already know that every time the government steps in to ‘solve’ a problem it is to the detriment of the people.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how this turns out.
You allow leftists into the MRA. They try to use the same government-love BS that feminists have been using for decades to reverse the trend.
But they are working against indoctrination their kind have fed into children for at least two generations, and a society which has been subjected to this crap for as long as anyone in it has been alive.
It is like trying to stop an elephant by throwing a toy elephant the size of your thumb at it.
Not only will it not help you stop the elephant, it makes you look like a lunatic. And that will come. The attempts the MRA leftists make to bring Social Justice into this will be appealing to the very people who already Have the ideology that supports feminists.
They won’t see men fighting for equality. They will see Privileged Males whining that the patriarchy is under attack.
You lose those capable of reason because you have these types in the group.
You lose those who share their ideology have already accepted an opposing cause or you wouldn’t need the movement in the first place..
so you lose Everyone in the end.
Same types of queers who say voting 3rd party will let a democrat win.
Well said. I’ve said some of the same things to them over there… and got the same reaction. Except I feel no Leftist in the MRM will regret the destruction of the patriarchy. They rejoice in it… because they’re Leftists. Their just fellow useful idiot travellers squabbling over their pecking order in the same henhouse.
Lefties in the MRM means it becomes co-opted as a conspirator with the larger agenda Western feminism is based in.
AFVM jumped the shark a while back imo. Victor Zen/Sage Gerard is the only one I still pay attention to anymore.
I agree. It’s pretty disheartening but predictable to read the contents that Dean and Paul wrote to you.
Well done, Chris, as usual. Your clarity is impeccable. Based on what I’ve read thus far, AVfM is whacked and your argument and logic superior. Game, set, and match to CC. thank you.
The folks at AVfM are a lot like feminists. Bill Price of the Spearhead is for example a far better asset to Men’s rights movement.
Thats why Bill Price runs a lowly ranked site that attracts very few other authors, and has pretty much shut down.
Thats why the commenters there are largely “Right Wing Only” types who bitch and whine for years, but havent managed to form any organized force.
Ad populum, a sure way of making yourself look retarded.
I got the same reaction over there by Jack Strawb with my comments about the relationship of feminism to the State and to the Left Wing.. Funny, but I saw him the same way you do. And he argues that way too.
Yeah, my “last comment” on AVFM (an organization I have been very supportive of btw) was that I was a RW asshole who should never come back. Whatever. They wonder why they don’t get more traction. Alienate more than 1/2 your potential audience for a start!
I have, over several decades, spent a lot of time with professional “change agents” who refer to themselves as “leftists” and are very concerned about every nuance in the world of leftist thinking. Some of them are established, very influential professional feminists, including some of international fame. It is a strange thing to try to discuss feminist ideology with people who went through college ignoring the humanities departments’ ideological preaching. It is sort of like trying to discuss the history of Christianity while being constrained from uttering the presumably “partisan” terms “trinity” “theology.”
The notion that discussions of the ideas being used in the texts in the syllabi of law philosophy, top law schools, top journals, the places and the texts that train judges and top-flight government bureaucrats who personally DRAFT THE DAMN LAWS cannot include the self-identifying terms “left,” “leftist,” “lest,” “old left” is beyond absurd.
Especially when someone chimes in that discussions of straight-forward important, highly influential feminist ideology that use the BAD WORD are merely expressions of coffee-shop level half-baked, semi-educated, lazy, usually deriving from personality and style rather than thought and knowledge, “partisanship.”
The entrenched middle-browism is stunting in effect.
Meanwhile the State is on skates and feminism makes it all glide along all the more briskly as if on a Vaseline highway.
At the moment the Officious head editor has stepped down from editorial cathedra, following an era of weakness exhibited in ideology-ignorance, deliberate obliviousness to the institutional structure of the roll-out of feminist governance. An approach that has resulted in confusion about basic facts (about the opponents’ nature and thoughts, and even basic history) and in a diet of for too many guessy opinion-pretending-to-be-more-than-opinion texts, in sentimental 60s-era “save the world”-style regurgitation of
long-debunked ultra-shallow cliches re: “building a better more fair society”, condescending “anti-racism” supplied by a white savior of the black community type (which is roundly dismissed, of course, by solid black MRAs who actually know real stuff about the black experience), plus a bunch of unproductive time-consuming deeply silly internet co-bullying (a type of pathological co-dependence) personality-conflict flame wars (meaningless fruitless low level pop culture conflict).
At this point, AVfM has a true thinker and thorough researcher, inquirer in the figure Lucian Valsan, so who knows what kind of things might get written and published to educate those who have not yet become deeply familiar with feminist ideology and the bureaucratic/ governmental system that affords it such a high degree of aristocracy-level unaccountability.) Perhaps the MRM is in an “Up from Twaddle” moment.
Never discount Paul Elam. He has long-term vision and in big picture terms, he is on a solid productive path.