On Friday the 25th of November, 2011, I was honored to join Paul Elam and John the Other in the work of editing and managing A Voice for Men.
Some of you old-timers already know me, even from years back. But for others, I am just Mutt Wulfe or Vince Verngehetznor who has recently popped up on the radar scope. So an introduction is very much in the warrant here, don’t you think so?
All right, I start with a confession: I confess that I am a lucky bum. Many people have arrived in the pro-male sector by the road of bitter experience and even, at times, horrific tragedy. But I can’t claim that distinction for myself, and that is why I’m a lucky bum. For yes, I am oh-so-lucky that I arrived here by the merely conceptual pathway, the path of deciphering reality and following my nose because something didn’t smell right.
There was a time, believe it or not, when I felt neutral or indifferent about feminism. In those days, I had nothing particular against feminism, but the fact is, I paid it scarcely any mind whatever. For me it was eccentric background noise, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. And to be frank I was more invested in such weighty affairs as panlogomachia and chronopolitismus. (Don’t ask!) But shortly after Y2K I grew keenly aware of feminism as of a fetid breath from a quagmire, and I commenced to sniffing around.
What I discovered did not please me, so I put away panlogomachia and chronopolitismus and embarked on a journey which led me finally to the online men’s rights community — such as it was in those days, when the word ‘MRA’ didn’t even exist yet! Here I lingered and learned, participating in mail lists, forums and so on. I also started digging into feminist books that I excavated from used bookstores. Oh…and I will never forget the time when I first set eyes on the Redstockings Manifesto, in a feminist anthology, at the downtown Seattle library. I remember copying key passages into a notebook, which proved unnecessary because it was easily available online. But oh…those were heady days of dawning awareness and discovery — rich, ripe, juicy and full to the brim with a bracing sense of mission.
In October 2006, I started the Counter-Feminist blog — and oddly enough, I did this on a whim, on the spur of the moment. Prior to then I had compiled a body of writing for the purpose of organizing my thoughts, and this material formed the backbone of the blog in its early days. The blog got off to a rolling start, and the rest is history. Which brings me up to right now, to this very day, to this very minute.
I drool at the thought of exploiting the AVfM platform for my own dark, nefarious counter-feminist purposes. Such opportunity! I am rubbing my hands together like a villain as I contemplate this. And yes, I am even saying things like “mu-ha-ha-ha!” Curse me, but this here is a bully pulpit indeed.
All right, I have an agenda. Call it a vision for the future; an idea where things ought to be heading. And no, I don’t mean AVfM. I mean ALL of this. The whole game. The whole revolution. The whole damned enchilada. Just imagine: a world without feminism. What would such a world look like? Well, you haven’t got far to seek, because that world is here today. It exists, has always existed, and always will exist, even though feminism is loud enough to drown it out sometimes.
Feminism, I would have you know, is no better than a guest who has overstayed his welcome. Or then again, perhaps we never invited that so-called guest into our home in the first place. But either way, this unwanted person must be shown the door. Are you with me? Now, we would have some rights in the case of a literal unwanted guest, and these would be covered under trespass law. But in our actual case, we face a spiritual kind of trespass that no earthly statute, civil or criminal, may remedy.
So it looks like we must take the SPIRITUAL law into our own hands, eh?
And that is what I, for one, would like to talk about. Among many, many other things.
In truth, I have so many ideas for kicking feminism out of our spiritual home that they jam the exit door of my mind and can hardly issue forth. But the crowning imperative, to expel the rascal rudely, overshadows everything else. We mustn’t stand on ceremony, oh no! And if the application of this involves discipline, political finesse, and a host of details in practice, the core of it remains, ever and always, primitively stark and simple. I mean that we do not “persuade” this monstrosity to make its departure, but rather cause it to be removed from our premises by any efficient method or combination of methods our ingenuity might suggest. The key is, that whatever works, works. So the problem is to figure out what works.
Bear in mind that feminism is not the world. It is only a part of the world, and it holds power only at our sufferance — until we elect to suffer it no longer. And when feminism is gone, the world will still exist — and we will still understand it. And feminism’s disappearance will have expunged no wisdom. So we can understand almost straightway what the world without feminism will look like, because we have only to recall what we have always known. As the sign in the shop window says, “Inquire Within”.
I repeat, part of the world is feminism and part of it is not. And let us never forget that the latter is the larger portion. For knowing this, we know that the line is drawn and the die is cast, and that from here on out the story will get interesting. Yes, we live in interesting times.
But we shall speak further of these matters.
