Well, I said I was going to wait a while, but recent events have put me in the zone. I will, though, keep it brief, as it is time to put the recent fiasco orchestrated by the Good Men Project Magazine in the rear view, along with the site itself.
I was contacted some weeks ago by Henry Belanger, Senior Editor of GMPM, advising me that the site was going to do a special on the men’s movement and requesting that I submit one or more articles, and hopefully help him recruit other writers in the MRM to supply material as well.
As anyone who reads this site knows, that is what I did.
I took this as good news as I had enjoyed a civil and cooperative relationship with Henry, and as we had discussed on more than one occasion, I felt that GMPM was in a unique position to foster the competition of ideas between MRA’s and feminists under the same roof, at the same time (provided that GMPM management was objective and even handed in handling material and comments).
I did have reason at the time to believe that was going to be possible. My experiences with Belanger had left me the impression that he (at least him personally) was more interested in the success the GMPM website than he was in ideology, and that he was a man, a “good” man, that operated with integrity.
I was wrong.
As so aptly described by guest writer Lady Gyoo, Henry Belanger’s “Meet the Men’s Rights Movement,” the article used to introduce the men’s rights community to their general readership, was anything but objective. It was a calculated hit piece, designed to incite their readership to view us as a bunch of hate mongering crack pots before ever having read a word of our work. And it served as an open invitation to treat us with the same derision and condescension in the comments as he did in his article.
In a style reminiscent of moron blogger David Futrelle, (who also joined in on the GMPM bashwagon) Belanger went on the attack, not of our literature or issues regarding the affairs of men and boys, but on a handful of angry, dissenting comments posted on their website by people he cannot even verify are MRA’s. That was the standard he used to characterize an entire social movement.
In that one article, Belanger managed to completely undermine any opportunity we had to realize the ambition of putting facts and figures on the table objectively and reasonably so that all ideas could be vetted and given a fair hearing.
He also destroyed any trust in him that I had, but that is a more personal matter unworthy of more than this sentence.
I wrote Belanger an email regarding this, calling on him to clean up his mess, both from his article, and by the fact that he allowed Futrelle to post an article which dishonestly mischaracterized a piece of satire that I did as being serious. Futrelle, at this point, still reeling from being humiliated by debating with me, had already made it into the comments section of my article making personal attacks. In short, he was acting like one of Henry’s crazy MRA’s.
And of course, no one at GMPM raised an eyebrow.
Bellanger’s response was to go in to Futrelle’s article make a minor, meaningless edit and to remove his comments from the thread following my article.
Insufficient.
The same goes for GMPM CEO Lisa Hickey, who appeared in the comments here trying to do a song and dance around the facts, even using Futrelle-Belanger strategy of focusing on one of the comments but ignoring the valid points about her website that were expressed in the featured article.
You would think she might have at least not repeated the same mistakes. But I am not sure what else we should expect at this point from a disingenuous cunt that makes her living off trying to turn men into lap dogs.
The really unfortunate thing about this whole affair is that by pulling this stunt, this schoolyard bait and switch, GMPM has only exposed themselves as shifty and untrustworthy.
Pretty much what we have been saying about feminists all along. Too many lies for too long to take anything they say seriously.
Not that I imagine they care. Hell, they don’t even care about their own readers. Not only are they manipulating hostile sentiments out of them and cheating them of information that could well be of benefit to men and boys, they also have an arrogance about them that is even more telling.
Several times I have come across complaints in the comments at GMPM from both MRA and non MRA readers that they had unfortunate experiences while posting there. Many of them had taken the time to post thoughtful and detailed responses to articles only to have the page automatically refresh on them before they could hit the submit button, dumping whatever they had written in the process.
I never saw an editor respond to those complaints.
Here’s the deal, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal, auto refreshing is a highly controversial practice employed by websites so they can artificially inflate the number of advertising impressions on their site. The net result is that they are touting (and likely collecting ad revenue) on a whopping 20-40% of ad impressions that are never seen by readers.
So hey, if you ever lost a comment over on that site because the page refreshed on you before you could finish typing, at least you can have the consolation of knowing that it happened in the name of cheating someone out of some money.
Good men? Right.
This whole affair, from the lies to the rip offs, could best be summed up by my late, great Uncle Floyd who could always size up people with a few words uttered in a smooth and low central Texas drawl. I know exactly what he would say.
“Son, when you come across a liar, look closer. Chances are you’re looking at a thief, too.”
Uncle Floyd was a good man. And right smart.
[Addendum: GMPM is now attempting, though comment moderation, to prevent its readers from hearing the facts about their practice of auto refreshing. This article is offered to the blogging community at large. It may be reprinted at will, without permission]
