MRA: Making women suffer is a highly ineffective way to put them in their place
Making women cry: Highly ineffective.
Given the enmity towards women in general, and feminists in particular, that’s omnipresent in the manosphere, it seems logical to assume that most of the dudes lingering around MRA, PUA and MGTOW sites online would take a certain secret pleasure in seeing women suffer.
As regular readers of this blog know all too well, oftentimes the desire to see women suffer is not so secret: some MRAs and others of their ilk literally laugh at women getting cancer, declare that rapists should be given medals, openly fantasize about “beat[ing] the living shit” out of women, and tell feminists who complain about this sort of shit that they’re “so pernicious and repugnant that the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection.” (Those last two examples come from Paul Elam, one of the MRM’s most influential bloggers.) Still others send rape and death threats to outspoken women online.
But good news, folks! It turns out that not all manosphere misogynists want women to suffer. Why? Because suffering is an ineffective way to put women in their place. That, at least, is the argument of a fellow calling himself Höllenhund. In a comment on Susan Walsh’s Hooking Up Smart blog, he offered this argument:
Making women suffer wouldn’t achieve anything in itself – I’m pretty sure the overwhelming majority of the Manosphere would agree. Women are normally solipsistic and they fail to understand their own urges and don’t comprehend the connection between cause and effect. They’d never understand why they’re suffering in the first place.
So, basically, in his mind, women are dumber than dogs and thus harder to train. Even worse, the suffering women can sit down in the street and cry, and countless “white knights,” hoping to win their approval (and get in their pants) will rush to their aid:
Suffering only motivates them to fish for male sympathy (and thus investment) through crying and whining, to blame ‘ bad men’ for their ‘misfortune’ and thus play the game of ‘let’s you and him fight’. That’s how it has always been.
So making women suffer is largely pointless. I’d go further and say it’d actually be detrimental to men because it encourages white-knighting and intra-male competition. …
And some of the ladies even seem to sort of like it:
Not to mention the fact that many women actually seem to find some sort of twisted pleasure in suffering, that all this’d simply serve to justify more anti-male legislation and whatnot.
Poor Höllenhund doesn’t have much hope that women will ever see how totally terrible they really are
[T]he notion of making women ‘admit their faults’ is pie-in-the-sky as well. Again, I’m sure pretty much everyone in the Manosphere would agree. You have a bigger chance of seeing pigs fly.
If women are to recognize their faults in this SMP [Sexual Marketplace], they need to have a realistic picture of both their own sexuality and the SMP in the first place, plus they need to have empathy for beta males …
Er, you’re lecturing us about empathy?
Sorry, on with the rest of the sentence:
plus they need to be imbued with the sense of morality without which the very concept of ‘fault’ is meaningless.
And lecturing us about morality too?
I think we’ll sooner see Haiti become a dreaded military superpower.
I’d rather see that than live in a world in which women were so self-hating that they actually believed they were guilty of whatever unnamed sins Höllenhund attributes to them.
NOTE: I found Höllenhund’s comment because the blogger at Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology cited it as a prime example of the sort of brave “truth telling” that will get you banned “on feminist sites that supposedly support men.” And yes, it apparently did get poor Höllenhund banned from Hooking Up Smart. I’m not quite sure how Susan Walsh, a traditionalist devoted to slut shaming in a thousand different flavors, counts as feminist, but that’s not the point. The point is: I’m regularly accused of “cherry picking” comments from MRAs. In this case, Mr. PMAFT picked the comment for me.
Posted on February 20, 2012, in a voice for men, antifeminism, antifeminst women, bullying, creepy, evil women, misogyny, MRA, oppressed men, paul elam, rape, rapey, the enigma that is ladies, threats, violence against men/women, white knights. Bookmark the permalink. 485 Comments.
I had the faintly related thought that the political arena in the US has become so ugly and hostile that it’s almost like the toxic shit driving women out of internet discussion spaces. It seems like a stretch but I wonder if ratcheting up the awfulness is intended to surpress the turnout of female voters.
What is SMP?
SMP = “Sexual marketplace,” i.e., the view of the universe where all women are goods for sale, and expecting to be treated like humans is overpricing.
“Sexual Marketplace.” MRAs like to pretend it’s real thing.
Also, I can’t admit “the faults of women” because that’s like admitting the faults of people whose names start with T. I don’t think Tim Burton should have to answer for the faults of Ted Bundy, you know?
“Er, you’re lecturing us about empathy?”
“And lecturing us about morality too?”
How is this a counter-argument to the post that you are criticizing? If women are not held to the same degree of accountability for their abusive acts as men are for men’s abusive acts, then how are abusive women supposed to be effectively challenged? And as long as women are less vigorously challenged about their abusive acts than men are, what recourse to men have? Namely, how can men who are abused by women — and who seek help — find an adequate level of assistance to meet their needs and stop the abuse?
If you were a man a woman were hitting you, and if you had not yet been injured (but feared you could be), then how would you feel if your call for empathy or assistance was rejected? How would you feel if your call for empathy was met with mocking laughter? Worse, how would you feel if this was the status quo, and yet the group of people who purport to stand up for the rights of both sexes to be free from victimization from intimate partner violence went so far as to actually justify the status quo? I have seen quotes on this blog where people actually defended the idea that men who were abused by women SHOULD be turned away from receiving shelter-based services, because those services were presumably created by women to exclusively serve the needs of women, and that MRAs should build shelter networks for men themselves because non-MRAs couldn’t be bothered to do so (nor to use the existing infrastructure to adapt to the needs of abused men).
Instead of claiming that you’re above being lectured about empathy, why not show some? After all, it was on your blog that such comments were made, and you didn’t challenge them at the time, David.
http://manboobz.com/2011/01/10/gunwitch-update/comment-page-1/#comment-5371
I got to this Elam quote by clicking around in the links David provided:
“I have ideas about women who spend evenings in bars hustling men for drinks, playing on their sexual desires so they can get shit faced on the beta dole; paying their bar tab with the pussy pass. And the women who drink and make out, doing everything short of sex with men all evening, and then go to his apartment at 2:00 a.m.. Sometimes both of these women end up being the “victims” of rape. But are these women asking to get raped? In the most severe and emphatic terms possible the answer is NO, THEY ARE NOT ASKING TO GET RAPED.
They are freaking begging for it…Damn near demanding it”
I’ve read as much as fucked up shit from Elam as everyone else on this site but…wow, this takes the cake. He really is a pathetic excuse for a human being.
Roscoe, an entire gender is never “held accountable” for anything, because an entire gender does not act as one.
Also, feminists are against DV by anybody and in favor of DV support systems for everybody. That comment you’re linking to isn’t saying men should be turned away from shelters. It’s only saying that it’s not fair for MRAs to demand that feminists make men’s-only shelters for them.
And if any feminists aren’t in favor of supporting male DV victims, they should be, and I can say this without supporting a guy who thinks women are stupider than rats and should only be spared torture because they’re too stupid to learn from torture.
And holy shit Elam is disgusting. He’s just… pro-rape. There’s not much else to it. He wants people to be raped because oh fuck I just hate the world today.
Crumbelievable, that is the worst thing I’ve ever seen from him. It’s bad enough that it actually surprised me, and not much that Paul Elam says is surprising anymore.
I just… I can’t quite fathom it.
I know this is taking things way too literally, but isn’t the definition of rape something that you can’t ask for?
It seems like if he believed his own bullshit he’d say “are asking to have sex.”
But then he couldn’t inject the maximum amount of hate into his TOTALLY MODERATE HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT FOR EQUALITY.
““Er, you’re lecturing us about empathy?”
“And lecturing us about morality too?”
How is this a counter-argument to the post that you are criticizing?”
Hollenhund’s oppostion to making women suffer was not “It is morally wrong to make women suffer”. It was “Making them sufer is pointless”. As in, if the suffering was useful, he would be A-OK with it.
Then he criticizes other people for lacking a sense of morality.
If you can’t see what’s wrong with the post then you should stay away from women entirely. In fact stay away from people altogether.
Well, I’ll assume that even though this is a one-sided half blind blog whose moderation while usually light does skew on the unbalanced, that you all still don’t want to look stupid.
Holly has succeeded in redefining the sexual marketplace in her mind. It’s not like you get to go and just pick up any old woman you want, in fact, in most models sexuality in heterosexual relationships is considered a solely female resource, and ..get this…they get to CHOOSE whom they sell it to, or even if they sell it at all, so in this case the seller has all the control.
Now I don’t think male sexuality is worthless or that women never want it, but the important thing about the SMP in this context isn’t that you or I can criticize the concept (though I think there is some validity to the models based on it) but that Holly misrepresents it as giving all the power to the men.
http://psr.sagepub.com/content/8/4/339.short
Anyone else getting the impression that Paul Elam is little more than a troll? He obviously doesn’t care about men at all, as evidenced by his being just fine with making rape jokes about them. I think he just enjoys the attention that being an asshole on the internet gets him.
Roscoe, booboonation didn’t say abused men shouldn’t receive services. She just said that it would be harmful to house both men and women in the same shelter. Most of the women at battered women’s shelters are there to escape abusive men. If the shelters stopped being gender segregated, then their abusers could follow them there and move in to gain access to their victims. It would be very dangerous to allow abusers and victims to live in the same shelter.
It would be better for men to have their own shelters, staffed by men who are trained to deal with the unique needs of battered husbands. Battered men might be scared to live in close proximity to women, because the women would remind them of their abusive wives. They would feel anxiety just being around female workers, and they would be afraid to open up to female counselors. Finally, putting men and women together would make both the men and women vulnerable to sexual abuse.
The women’s shelter in my city runs mostly on donations, and it is mostly staffed by volunteers. The only reason it is available is because a lot of people, mostly women, think it’s important enough to donate their time and money to. It is not hateful to feminists to ask MRA’s to put some time and money into building men’s shelters. It’s helpful advice. Shelters don’t just fall out of the sky as gifts from the government. They’re created by dedicated people that want to help in the real world and not just on the Internet.
I somehow still manage to be shocked by how incredibly grim and heartless this kind of misogynistic shit is; not just their view of women, but their entire worldview of interpersonal relationship dynamics. To them, there’s only one kind of woman and two kinds of men. The only kind of woman is the “harpy”, a hypocritical woman who only exists to tempt men with their evil, evil boobies and take their stuff, and then the “alpha” and “beta” men, who are also bad because “alphas” are perfect and get laid all the time or whatevs, and “betas” are bad because sometimes they act like women are actually people (which is apparently an unforgivable MRA sin) and, of course, they only do that because they think it’ll get them laid. (I’d also like to know where these MRA douchebags see themselves on that scale; if they’re not the asshole alphas or the pathetic “white-knighting” betas, then what are they? Oh, right, they “go their own way”.)
This is not only the result of turning sex into a commodity, but making women into the sole brokers of that commodity. I don’t know any women who want that mantle.
Yeah, Elam is obviously a troll, but MRAs don’t seem to think so.
“Empathy for betas” means “please fuck a NIce Guy” in MRAspeak. As we all know, not getting laid on demand is the worst thing that could ever happen to a guy.
And it’s all your fault! Yes you! Why won’t women be impressed by what men think they should be impressed by?!!
What?!! You still haven’t apologized?! The arrogance, the sheer arrogance!!!! WAARGHH Alpha Fuck GARGLEGARGLE Entitled Thug Princesses SPITSPIT
and the money >_>
By the way, does the OP remind anyone else of DKM? With the “abusing women is baaaad… because there are better ways to make submissive kitchen/sex slaves!”
All it needs is a dash of “but I totally get it when men do abuse women, because they were probably terribly provoked by the women doing things like having opinions and getting jobs,” and it would be pretty classic Meller.
It isn’t Meller until there’s a creepy doll fetish aspect.
“plus they need to have empathy for beta males …”
Oh yeah, I’d temporarily forgotten that I live in a universe where a small subsection of men have tried to create a social movement to solve the problem of ‘not getting laid’.
How about everyone just forgets the entire concept of ‘beta males’? Can we have that please?
@Holly: “Roscoe, an entire gender is never ‘held accountable’ for anything, because an entire gender does not act as one.”
The point is that there is unequal justice when members of one sex are permitted to abuse with impunity and compared to the opposite sex they are never challenged on it (or are challenged on it far less frequently). And the OP was not addressing the point being made, which is that one sex receives preferential treatment after doing harm, and gets away with inflicting that harm.
@Kendra: “Roscoe, booboonation didn’t say abused men shouldn’t receive services. She just said that it would be harmful to house both men and women in the same shelter.”
Why would it be harmful? Just because they’re the opposite sex of each other? I can see the merits of separate shelter accommodations between two victims who are intimate partners to each other. In that case there’s already a pre-existing emotional connection, an animosity. But such a scenario could be prevented simply by screening out applicants who are known partners of some of the residents there. As it is, we have a whole sex of victims being denied entrance to the shelter, simply because by being male they are considered to be a threat. Yet it is not uncommon in shelters for female victims themselves to be generally violent, and yet they are housed alongside other victims as if not a threat. The point is that within a shelter setting, what seems like a threat at first can often be managed, with empathy and discretion. Yet too often, male victims of female-perpetrated DV don’t get the benefit of the doubt. They’re simply turned away. The commenter in the thread that I linked to endorses the status quo, likening the sexual separation of a locker room to the sex-based denial of services to all male applicants. She goes on to call for not just sexual separation of proverbial locker rooms, but construction of entirely separate locker rooms based on sex. It’s a comment worthy of being challenged, especially by one who seems to consider himself to be above being challenged on his empathy. And David didn’t challenge it.
@Kendra:
“Putting men and women together would make both the men and women vulnerable to sexual abuse.”
Such is the argument of the empathy-challenged. A man comes to a shelter seeking help, and in your ideal world he is turned away as a potential rapist.
@Crumbelievable:
When someone is punished through legitimate means for their abusive acts, they necessarily suffer. Justice often inflicts a form of suffering. Poetic justice (such as an abused or under-appreciated partner ending a relationship with an abusive partner) also inflicts some degree of suffering. And yes, imposing any kind of illegitimate, violent form of suffering on someone merely because of their sex is unjustified. I just think it’s unfair of you to distract from the point I was making by implying that I somehow was advocating violence against a group merely by recognizing the unfair privileges enjoyed by that group.
Yes, that sure is unequal. I totally agree with you there.
Sorry about my failure to be the Imaginary Evil Feminist who wants women to not be subject to the law.
Hahaha, this is a pretty blunt statement of “I didn’t like the OP so I just wrote about my own thing, okay? Everyone play along now.”
No, in the ideal world he’s sent to a men’s shelter.
But if men are let into a shelter for women escaping abusive men, then women have nowhere to hide from their abusers, and that’s not okay. Your feelings are not more important than that.
Seriously, what is the point of coming to a feminist blog to complain that feminist s are cruel, uncaring bigots when you already believe that’s what feminists and women are? At what exact point in your imagination (which is where such ideas come from)would you think that we aren’t entirely comfortable with our hypocrisy?
I may read MRA blogs for amusement at times, I don’t bother with posting on subjects I don’t think they give a rats ass about.
@Holly:
“No, in the ideal world he’s sent to a men’s shelter.”
As a rapist.
“As a rapist.”
You’re a troll. Next, please!
Roscoe P Coltrane – I used to work for an organization that provided free legal assistance to survivors of domestic violence (at the time I was there, all the employees were women). Guess what we did when a man came to us after his wife tried to run him over with a car? Did we laugh at him? In fact we did not; we provided services to him, so that he could be protected. Guess who did laugh? A guy I told about it later (who could not in any way be described as a feminist.)
A lot of abusers will go to great lengths to track their victims down. It would be very difficult to set up a screening process that was able to weed out partners of current shelter residents. Sex-segregation in shelters is an imperfect solution to a messy problem (for one thing, it does not address the needs of people in same-sex relationships.) That agency I used to work for? Shortly before I started there, one of the clients was shot and killed by her ex. These security precautions are not driven by misandry; they’re driven by a desire to save people’s lives.
It’s very sad that male victims often have fewer options. At the same time, it’s not as though female victims have it easy; in my area, there’s often a waiting list, so women can’t just waltz into a shelter either. We need more resources across the board: to provide emergency shelter, to provide financial assistance to people who were economically dependent on abusive partners, to provide education in recognizing abusive behaviors, to provide emotional and relationship support that helps people not be abusive in the first place.
And while that is all very interesting and important, it has jack-all to do with someone claiming that women are incapable of understanding cause and effect and completely lack empathy.
@Holly: “But if men are let into a shelter for women escaping abusive men, then women have nowhere to hide from their abusers, and that’s not okay. Your feelings are not more important than that.”
I addressed that point here:
http://manboobz.com/2012/02/20/mra-making-women-suffer-is-a-highly-ineffective-way-to-put-them-in-their-place/comment-page-1/#comment-126508
Intimate partners should not be housed in the same shelter. Abuser and abused should not be housed in the same shelter. But you have likened “men” to “abusve men,” as if a female victim of a *particular* abusive man is still in danger simply by being at a shelter where she’s in proximity to men. I disagree with that premise. Just because you’re a male victim in a shelter, you shouldn’t be turned away because some of the female victims at the same shelter are trying to escape not just their abuser (who happens to be male) but all males everywhere. And you just accused me of elevating my feelings at others’ expense. You’re making my argument for me.
He just made a comment that illustrates that no matter what you say, he has a better idea of what you think. I don’t think explaining your experiences are gonna work with this one. He’s out for shits and giggles.
But such a scenario could be prevented simply by screening out applicants who are known partners of some of the residents there.
I don’t think you’ve really thought this plan through. A huge part of the point of going to a DV shelter is to be in a place where your abuser does not know where you are and cannot find you. If people are only turned away because they are known to be the abuser of someone who is already there, guess what? You’ve just told every abuser who is turned away, “Hey, just so you know, this is where your victim is! Feel free to wait outside for her to enter or leave the building!” And that’s not even getting into how you identify people as abusers in the first place – is every victim now going to be required to submit the full name and a current photograph of her abuser(s) before she is allowed entrance, or are you planning on having all potential residents paraded past the current ones so that any of them can speak up and announce “nope, not him, that’s my abuser”? Because both of those plans have some pretty freaking obvious flaws to anyone who thinks about them for more than a tenth of a second.
I’m pretty sure they don’t let them rape anybody before sending them elsewhere. Or tattoo “rapist” on their foreheads.
So… what’s the problem here? Not exactly seeing the grave injustice in a few people from time to time wondering if an individual
man might be a rapist when they send him off to a men’s DV shelter.
“Empathy for betas” means “please fuck a NIce Guy” in MRAspeak. As we all know, not getting laid on demand is the worst thing that could ever happen to a guy.
But if you do fuck a beta (whatever the hell a “beta” is this week), you’re just using your sexuality to exploit him and steal his money and precious seed, so you’re still evil.
Rants like this one make me wonder what the hell the horrible Crimes of Women That Need Punishing actually are, but I’m pretty sure it’s just “existing.”
How is being sent to a men’s shelter labeling him as a rapist? Unless there are rapist shelters I have never heard of?
I have heard of men’s shelters, both homeless shelters, and housing for abused men and their families.
Disingenuous troll is disingenuous.
“but I’m pretty sure it’s just “existing.”
This.
What I find funny is he completely smoothed past the possibility of women sexually assaulting men.
TROOOLLLLL.
Seriously, the only reason a man would respond with “we have alternative housing for you” with “but I want in the women’s shelter!” rather than “oh thank God,” is because he intends to attack one of the women there. Otherwise, what the hell’s wrong with a men’s shelter?
A lot of shelter programs that aren’t big enough to have a whole men’s shelter actually give men motel vouchers, which in terms of privacy and amenities is probably a lot nicer than sleeping in a communal shelter.
Don’t put words in my mouth. I specifically said that gender neutral shelters could make both men and women more vulnerable to sexual abuse. There is the potential for men to rape women, and women to rape men. People that are escaping domestic violence and going to shelters are homeless, and that makes them very vulnerable to sexual assault. Where can a person go once zie is abused at the very shelter that was supposed to provide hir protection? This is one of the reasons that many homeless shelters are also segregated by gender.
Abusers shift the blame for their behavior onto their victims. They pretend to be the victims when they are actually the perpetrators. What is a shelter worker supposed to do when both a husband and wife show up saying that they are being abused? Abusers also lie to get what they want, and in this case it is access to their victims. What if the abusers lie and say they don’t know anyone in the shelter? How can a shelter worker know who’s telling the truth? The safety of the victims is supposed to be the top priority.
I want to know why the MRA’s are so adamant about getting access to women’s shelters and refuse to create men’s shelters. Women’s shelters don’t have the resources to meet the unique needs of male victims. Male victims need shelters staffed by men, so they can feel safe while they rebuild their lives after escaping from IPV.
I wish MRA’s would take action to help male victims rather than try to fight any programs that help female victims.
@burgundy:
(paraphrased): “Male and female victims served together in the same setting? Impossible, and wreckless to their safety!”
Tell that to the shelters that actually do just that, without incident. They’re relatively rare, and I suspect that their rareness is due (in part) to misandry, but they do exist. If they can serve both sexes, then why can’t other shelters do it?
@Jenn93: I know. But for every imbecilic commenter, there may be many lurkers who are ignorant/undecided, and I think it’s important to make a clear argument they can read. But just once. After that, it’s on to the pointing and laughing.
Roscoe, please do not try to paraphrase me; you don’t seem to be able to do it at all well.
And while you are refraining from mis-stating my positions, you might also tell me what you have done to actually help even one male abuse survivor.
Where the hell are there co-ed DV shelters? Seriously.
And anyway why do you want them? What do they give you, besides access to vulnerable women, that a men’s shelter or motel room wouldn’t?
Fair enough, burgundy. Quite right.
Also, Paul Elam is repulsive and deplorable. Not only did he explicitly excuse the rape of women with that comment, he implicitly excused the rape of men. Great job, Elam. Glad to know the MRM is just all about fairness and equality and has such outstanding figureheads to look up to.
“And anyway why do you want them? What do they give you, besides access to vulnerable women, that a men’s shelter or motel room wouldn’t?”
Judging by his comments, to avert the terrible injustice of a man being labelled a rapist in somebody’s head. That’s just not due process! I guess Roscoe must be so world about false rape accusations zie thinks it’s a danger just going to a women’s DV shelter only to be turned away.
That’s the only way the dumb “As a rapist.” comment makes any rhetorical sense to me. But maybe I’m just too sleepy.
@Holly: “Seriously, the only reason a man would respond with ‘we have alternative housing for you’ with ‘but I want in the women’s shelter!’ rather than ‘oh thank God,’ is because he intends to attack one of the women there. Otherwise, what the hell’s wrong with a men’s shelter?”
You’re failing to recognize the status quo, which is that there are no men’s shelters. Why? Well one reason why some people wouldn’t support the construction of men’s shelters is because they consider such shelters to be havens for male abusers.
The OP was about the notion that there is not enough empathy for men who suffer, and about how this notion is mockworthy, as if the idea that misandry exists and is a problem is somehow untrue on its face. Now if David wants to impugn the motives of the person who he is criticizing, by all means do so. I don’t defend them. But I do think that the point is worth discussing that abusive women get away with doing a lot of harm whereas men get challenged on the harm that they dish out. And in my view it’s an idea not just worth discussing, but also worth accepting.
Inconsistent pronoun usage for the win. I said I was sleepy.
And this thread makes my stomach hurt.
“… as if the idea that misandry exists and is a problem is somehow untrue on its face.”
Well, you know what they say about stopped clocks.
A person who has been abused is going to have a tough time trusting anyone. The idea is not to put the needs over some random internet whiner but the person who has just escaped a really bad situation. If that means telling the men seeking entry at a woman’s shelter no, so be it. If it means telling a woman the same thing at a man’s shelter, so be it.
This is not about you Roscoe, this is about the victims and if you really truly care about men who are victims of DV, why are you bugging us over it instead of out fundraising to help those men? Or is this another case of “there is a problem, you women need to fix it because I sure as hell am too lazy to.”
These are lies from Imaginary World. There are men’s shelters, and when there aren’t, it’s because of the (NOT FEMINIST) idea that men don’t suffer DV.
I’ve never heard the thing about “havens for male abusers” ever, probably on account of how it makes zero sense.
No, I’m pretty sure the OP was about “it would be awesome to make women suffer, but they’re too stupid to learn from it anyway.” …Did you also read the OP in Imaginary World?
No ,it was not. Please go reread it. And try to comprehend it this time. Reread multiple times if need be.
It could be worthy of discussion. On a thread about that topic. But this is not that thread.
From Burgundy,
“Roscoe P Coltrane – I used to work for an organization that provided free legal assistance to survivors of domestic violence (at the time I was there, all the employees were women). Guess what we did when a man came to us after his wife tried to run him over with a car? Did we laugh at him? In fact we did not; we provided services to him, so that he could be protected.”
Actual worker with actual data. Provided services for an abused man in the real world.
What have you done Roscoe? Anything to help actual abused men in the physical world? Or are you mainly interested in the hypothetical men?
How would you know if people would support a men’s shelter or not if you’re not even trying to build one? You’ve given up before you even tried. The women’s shelters that are out there operate on a shoestring budget and the workers put their lives in danger to help the women they serve. This is the kind of dedication and hard work MRA’s will have to do if they want there to be more men’s shelters.
So far the only “work” I’ve seen from the MRM is harmful rather than helpful. They oppose the VAWA, even though it provides help to male victims. It’s up for reauthorization this year with more gender inclusive language to extend even more help to men and LGBT victims. Rather than applaud these changes, the MRA’s want to have the whole law scrapped. What good does that do for any victims?
MRA’s call and harass Avon salespeople just because they don’t like Avon for supporting the i-VAWA and selling products that raise awareness about DV and help women’s shelters. They could go out and find their own corporate sponsors to take on the cause of male victims, but instead choose to frighten Avon ladies and gentlemen.
Finally, they even called up donors for a shelter that serves the needs of male and female victims just because they didn’t like their ad campaign. The ads were supposedly misandric for showing that sometimes women are the victims of men. This is why I don’t trust MRA’s that say they are concerned about DV. Their actions speak louder than their words.
@Bostonian:
(paraphrased): “Discrimination based on sex is justified, because you’re complaining about it.”
Yes, doing something about a problem that I highlight is logically consistent. And I am. But the next time you hear someone advocating for the rights of women to receive equal treatment, please apply the same standard to them that you just applied to me (namely, “put up or shut up!”). This is a comment thread, by the way. It’s where ideas are bantered about.
““Empathy for betas” means “please fuck a NIce Guy” in MRAspeak.”
And the answer is “No”. A nice guy, sure, but not a Nice Guy, and definitely not an MRA.
Also, a beta is a fish.
“As we all know, not getting laid on demand is the worst thing that could ever happen to a guy.”
Don’t you understand that not getting laid on demand is lethal for men? This is why every man in the history of the world who ever lived is now dead, and the few still alive today will be dead eventually. It’s sciencey.
@Roscoe:
(paraphrased): “I ‘paraphrase’ people to say things they never said, and no one’s quite sure if I’m that bad at reading or if I’m lying on purpose!”
@Holly
Totally not on topic, but I just spotted this sign outside a furniture store in west LA:
First of all, who the hell are all these “alpha males” they keep whining about? It’s like a delusion a paranoid schizophrenic would come up with (no offense to these people).
@Kendra: “How would you know if people would support a men’s shelter or not if you’re not even trying to build one? You’ve given up before you even tried.”
How do you know what I’ve done? You don’t.
Bit like I said earlier, if some shelters can serve both sexes (and not just with hotel vouchers, but actually on the premises of the shelter), then I suspect that all can.
I do not think Roscoe knows what “paraphrase”means.
Roscoe, seriously, shut up. You’re helping no one. This from an actual male who has been abused himself.
I second the notion that instead of whining, you could do some actual research on F on M DV, go volunteer and face some abused people face to face.
Or are you so cowardly/paranoid about getting laughed at/targeted by some Imaginary Femenist Evil that you would rather yell at people on the internet?
But this hasn’t happened on Earth. There are no co-ed DV shelters.
(Am I wrong here? I’m welcome to counter-examples, but I really doubt I’ll get any.)
There are no co-ed DV shelters, and you know what? If there were, it would be dangerous for men, because their female abusers could track them down there!
Aren’t you at all worried about that?
I also should throw in here that I’ve produced fundraising for a women’s shelter and donated to them. Not just sat around on the Internet expressing a heartfelt wish that Somebody would do Something.
Good, go continue to do that instead of whining on here about how wrong it is that women have women shelters and men have men shelters when it comes to DV. (And men also have homeless shelters specifically for them because of their specific needs but never hear you MRAs whine about that now do we? Just those awful awful women.)
Might not want to use gender neutral pronouns when advocating a binarist system. You can say “he or she” when discussing binary separated spaces in which we are generally not made welcome.
I actually support the existence of gender neutral shelters, and this fearmongering that if men and women are housed together they can’t help but get all rapey is certainly unhelpful when it’s the same rhetoric that is used to create binary segregation systems where public accommodations exclude many non-binary people. It’s binarist and heteronormative.
Sex segregation may feel helpful to some people, but it should certainly not be the default of be used as an excuse to deny services in general. The existing binarist systems in homeless shelters tend to work to ensure that non-binary people are excluded.
Sex segregated spaces exclude me by default and make me feel unsafe in many cases. I avoid using public gendered restrooms, especially when I am alone. I will not attend any sex specific event. I worry about being arrested if I use a gendered public restroom, especially on days when I am being read more ambiguously or as a guy. Yeah, sex segregation makes things so very safe. e_e
Shelter the first one and give a voucher or different shelter assignment to the second arrival, you know, like you might do if you were faced with a lesbian couple. Actually, many lesbian and bi victims of abuse by women commonly complain that their abusers are let into the shelters very easily, because of perceptions around who is an is not “safe”. You could stop assuming all female abuse victims are heteros as well in this discussion. Also, there are women who were victims of non-IPV abuse by women. It’s not the case that for all abuse victims, women feel safer or that they find men per se triggering. A few people do, but does that justify exclusionary policies?
Vouchers are a good stop-gap, but this notion that binarist sex segregation is some sort of panacea makes me more than a little nauseous.
Roscoe is being more than a bit trolly, but there are a lot of other people who are making very messed up assumptions about the benefits of sex segregation systems here.
Roscoe, what is wrong with hotel vouchers? Hotel rooms are oftentimes better than communal shelters. A hotel room has a private bathroom, large bed, and a TV. That’s better than the barracks style quarters many shelters have. Neither shelters nor hotel vouchers can give someone a place to stay indefinitely, though. The purpose of shelters and vouchers are to provide temporary accommodations while the victim gets back on hir feet, and a place to hide from hir abuser.
i know it’s frustrating that nobody here is admitting to being the evil manhater you want them to be, but it’s still not a good idea to flat out admit that you’re not arguing in good faith
The public ones (that have locations known to all) apparently do but the hidden ones? Never heard of them being co-ed.
They still provide services to men. If not a bed in the actual shelter they usually have vouchers at nearby hotels.
Roscoe, you have said things that are simply not true at all. You are disingenuous to the point of being asinine in your “paraphrase” of, well everyone you “paraphrased”.
I am glad there are actual people working to help men with domestic violence, because idiots like you hurt the cause more than they help.
Signed,
someone who gives money and time to actual shelters.