KSU Men (KSUM) got first page treatment in The Sentinel, the Kennesaw State University (KSU) school paper. Staff writer Sierra Hubbard confirms that the SPLC allegation that AVfM is a hate group is false, and treats KSU Men’s position with refreshing objectivity. My sincerest thanks go out to Sierra and The Sentinel for featuring such balanced reporting, since journalistic integrity is frighteningly scarce.
Sierra’s piece was followed by a more expected editorial by Ashli Howell, who rehashes talking points on how both KSUM and AVfM are 1940s-reminiscent rape dungeons operated by white men and greased with the blood of the innocent.
A Jessica Fisher has also publicly announced her intention to protest Male Students in Peril in a comment.
We’ve seen what happens when feminists protest [1][2][3][4], which is why security has been alerted to the potential for disruption at the conference long in advance. Protesters are welcome to attend, and they are welcome to protest pursuant to their First Amendment rights in a way that is not disruptive of the conference. However, people all over the world have put good money in the conference, so hysterical thugs will be viewed as members of the Please Handcuff Me Coalition. Everyone deserves to have an enlightening, pleasurable experience. Those who aim to harm or disrupt with be promptly escorted out of the venue, regardless of their convictions.
Jessica, we welcome open minds and questions, not accusations. You can RSVP 100% free on Eventbrite and get time to ask whatever question you like of the speakers. Personally I’m not sure why a protest is necessary, but who am I to tell you what to do? Hell, KSU even has a spot right outside the Student Center on the campus green dedicated to public demonstrations.
Have fun.
So that’s Jessica, on to Ashli Howell:
I first became aware of KSU Men after seeing a few posters around campus and decided to look into it.
Ashli, I do not recall you attending a KSUM meeting. If you did, you certainly have not contacted KSUM staff with questions for the purposes of this piece.
Here’s what I found after hours of watching videos on Sage Gerard’s YouTube channel, which is under the name Victor Zen and researching the men’s rights movement: it appears to have some valid points. However, bringing awareness and discussing these issues is not the goal of KSU Men.
Your curiously absent sources non-withstanding, you have no authority to speak for us about our goals. KSUM has men and women in membership, and it is selfish to gloss over their thoughts and feelings. KSUM is feeding the homeless and pushing for equitable campus programs. Saying that we do nothing is really disrespectful to the people who work hard here.
While researching the men’s rights movement, there was no shortage of feminist vitriol, there was a lot of discussions on the A Voice for Men discussion board about the friend zone, and there was very little about any issue concerning men’s rights.
At the time of this writing, the AVfM forums have 11,364 threads on international events, entertainment, philosophy, and more. The current figure can be found near the bottom of the main forum page. Apparently all you got was “a lot of discussions” on the friend zone, and I don’t recall seeing that many after moderating that forum for several months.
I did a search for “friend zone” (without quotes) and got 36 threads (that, like the total thread count, may have grown since this article’s publication). If we assume for simplicity’s sake that is all the friend zone discussion on the AVfM discussion board, then you get that that friend zone threads make up 0.003% of the board. Even if you could find something objectionable in those threads, they were started by “lots” of people who do not represent AVfM or the men’s movement anyway.
It seems to me that the men’s rights movement is not trying to advance any concerns they have, but to degrade and discredit feminists at any opportunity.
Imagine a movement that established a precedent resulting in countless disconnected mothers who love their kids, simply by asserting that a child needs to be with the father. That same movement has been caught, on camera, violently abusing women sexually, verbally and physically, while calling for blood any time a woman even defends herself. This movement spreads lie after lie after lie about the statistics of victimization of sexual abuse, assault and more, hiding anything bad that happens to women to support their hysterical narrative of female privilege and oppression. They say through the WHO that 1 in 3 men are victims of sexual assault, while manipulating definitions to exclude women. They make up claims like “Men do 2/3rds of the world’s work for 10% of the income and own 1% of the world’s property,” paste random women’s names on posters reading “Rapist of the Month, ” and burn books. They encourage reducing the female population as a form of “decontamination,” ideally to 10% of the human population. They defend legal definitions that suggest only women can be rapists, and say that women are responsible for ending all rapes that happen to men. They yell at women to “Shut the fuck up” when women try to peacefully attend a talk, then pull a fire alarm when they don’t get their way. They run screaming and topless at female politicians. And when other men criticize this movement, the movement pretends those men don’t exist, or takes credit for their existence as free thinkers.
Now imagine that a man in that movement (who has done nothing to stop this insanity) protrudes his bottom lip and burps No-True-Scotsmans like:
We care about equality, and the women who don’t like it just need to get laid. Yes there are extremists, but women just want to attack and blame men. They don’t actually care about their own rights, or themselves.
What would you think about a movement like that?
I’d say that movement is run by psychos and the idiots who enable them.
Now what if I told you all of those things have been done, by feminists, to men? Flip the words “women” and “men” in the big paragraph above and you get a picture of reality, supported by the links. Saying that you are the real feminist who really believes in real equality is a cowardly cop-out.
For some reason, feminism is immune to criticism. Perhaps because feminism has infected academia, causing cross-eyed “peace studies” professors to write articles about each other’s articles until their insanity looks plausible? Or maybe it’s because blind followers of feminism are so used to prevaricating that they don’t know how to handle accountability.
No one here is blaming all of feminism for all problems happening to men. But feminism is a highly corrupt dogma based on the hysterical lies of manipulative, vindictive pundits and the gullible oafs who love them. There is nothing wrong with men and women with thoughts and feelings calling bullshit on that mess. While men’s rights advocacy is not necessarily the same as anti-feminism, men’s rights advocacy cannot be performed without accepting some hard truths about feminism that feminists don’t want to hear.
#WomenAgainstFeminism, A Voice for Men, the National Coalition for Men, A Voice for Male Students, GirlWritesWhat, The Honey Badger Brigade, KSU Men, Men’s Rights Edmonton, Men’s Rights Sydney, Men’s Rights Ireland, J4MB and countless other individuals and organizations have popped up precisely because we are sick of this shit, we’re sick of the ignorance and fear you propagate, and for the love of god, we want change.
If feminism was a movement run primarily by men for men’s rights, it would have been cast as a terrorist group long ago. Many of us aren’t nice to feminists because feminists abused us, and we don’t care how we sound anymore.
I proudly denounce feminism. I’m okay with women because they are human and therefore not particularly special, just like men. Women are not the same thing as feminism, and feminism as an institution does not act in a manner consistent with its purported goals. This is not speculation, it’s verifiable fact, and the “real feminists” are too sparse to clean the mess.
The second problem I have with the movement is the shock value it often uses to gain attention. The founder of A Voice for Men, Paul Elam, which funded KSU Men, said, “In the most severe and emphatic terms possible the answer is no, they’re not asking to get raped. They are freaking begging for it…near demanding it. And all the outraged PC demands to get huffy and point out how nothing justifies or excuses rape won’t change the fact that there are a lot of women who get pummeled and pumped because they are stupid (and often arrogant) enough to walk through life with the equivalent of a I’m a stupid, conniving b*itch – please rape me neon sign glowing above their empty little narcissistic heads.”
I just did your job by asking Paul to elaborate on the context you ignored (His email is not hard to find). Here’s his response:
It was a piece of satire posted and removed a long time ago. It was a provocative attack on the issue of “victim blaming” whereby feminists react to any insinuation that women should take precautions and use good judgement to reduce the probablility (sic) of violent crime as though it is unfairly putting the onus on victims. I said it in the same light as one might say that leaving your car running and unlocked in a grocery store parking lot was “begging to get your car stolen,” which is an expression that would raise very few eyebrows, even though it matches perfectly with the idea of not getting sloshed and getting into a car with a stranger as a good judgement call to reduce the chances of something bad, like rape, happening to you.
Feel free to ignore or twist that too, but it’s only fair that context is provided. Let’s go back to Ashli’s yammering:
This statement, admittedly, was incredibly shocking. It was also exactly what Paul Elam aimed to do. He has said that the Voice for Men movement does not actually believe those things and was just saying them for shock value.
When you live in a society that, by default, thinks you (as an innocent person) are actually evil and oppressive, you get tired of sitting in polite compliance.
[…] it merely infuriated most sane women.
Did you talk to the women of AVfM? How about #WomenAgainstFeminism? Or the women of the men’s movement in general? Have you talked to any of these women? I think they would be thrilled to know how insane they are.
Face facts: You ignored well over 99% of AVfM’s content and cherry-picked what fits some delusional fantasy of calling yourself egalitarian and accusing everyone who disagrees with you of hate. And you stepped on other women to make that point.
It also landed A Voice for Men on the Southern Poverty Law Center Misogyny sites list, further detracting from any issues it wants to address.
A staff writer in your publication found that was bullshit. There is a reason her piece is in News and yours is in Commentary.
They believe that because you are pro-woman, you must be anti-man.
KSUM never took issue with organizations like Kennesaw Women in Mathematics because we didn’t find their pro-woman advocacy to be objectionable given what we’ve seen so far. You need to prove when and where the Official Grand Patriarch of the Men’s Rights Movement™® explicitly stated that “if you are pro-woman, you must be anti-man.” Until then, your words are speculation.
[If] there is to be any meaningful discussion about the concerns that groups like KSU Men have, the hate has got to stop.
What hatred have you found KSUM committing as an organization? Again, I see us feeding the homeless and pushing for equity. There’s criticism of feminism, yes, but criticism is not hate. You may see it as hate, but that’s like, your opinion, man.
And yes, extreme feminists that bathe in the tears of men have some blame here too […]
I’ll ask you the same question I asked the other zealot: Where were you?
Where were you when KSUM was trying to secure a more gender-equitable narrative in RAD Systems? Where were you when I was passed an accusatory note by a feminist on this campus?
Right now I see empty words from an empty head with an empty resume, with empty support from empty people who want everyone else to be equally empty. You show up only when you see an opportunity to push your brand name, without substantiating any of your political fluff with action or experience.
This is why KSUM needs to exist, and why anyone with an open mind should come to the Male Students in Peril conference on November 1st.
Again, it’s completely free. All you have to do is RSVP and show up.
In my mind, egalitarians give new ideas an equal chance.
Will you do so?
