The Southern Poverty Law Center takes on the violent misogyny so pervasive in the Men’s Rights Movement
[TW for the comments to this post; discussions of rape and abuse.]
The Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization devoted to tracking and exposing hate groups, has just published a detailed report on the misogyny and violent rhetoric so pervasive in the Men’s Rights Movement — as well as the actual violence inspired by this sort of hatred of women. It’s a piece you all should read, even though few of the details will be new to long-time readers of this blog.
Arthur Goldwag, an expert on conspiracy-mongers and the far right, argues (I think correctly) that the Men’s Rights movement is largely a backlash against the many successes of feminism over the last several decades:
It’s not much of a surprise that significant numbers of men in Western societies feel threatened by dramatic changes in their roles and that of the family in recent decades. Similar backlashes, after all, came in response to the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, and other major societal revolutions. What is something of a shock is the verbal and physical violence of that reaction.
[Thomas] Ball’s suicide brought attention to an underworld of misogynists, woman-haters whose fury goes well beyond criticism of the family court system, domestic violence laws, and false rape accusations.
The Men’s Rights Movement, as it exists today, is not a civil rights movement; it is a regressive, hateful reaction against a civil rights movement — that is, feminism.
Those who truly care about the rights of men, and who are not motivated by a hatred of women or feminism, need to repudiate the hate and the violent rhetoric of the Men’s Rights Movement as it exists today. Only then can there be a Men’s Rights Movement worthy of the name.
EDITED TO ADD: The SPLC has also put up a guide to some of the more hateful sites in the manosphere. Longtime readers will be familiar with most of them.
EDITED TO ADD AGAIN: And a piece debunking some Men’s Rights Myths.
EDITED TO ADD AGAIN, AGAIN: The discussion of the SPLC report on the Men’s Rights Subreddit is surprisingly reasonable, so far. (I mean, compared to what I expected. Meanwhile, over in this thread, the Men’s Rightsers are behaving as they usually do.)
Posted on March 8, 2012, in actual activism, anti-MRA information, antifeminism, MGTOW, misogyny, MRA, terrorism, threats. Bookmark the permalink. 760 Comments.
Roberta – Please stop pretending to be stupid in order to excuse a real person’s actual rape. There’s a big goddamn not subtle difference between “we need to renegotiate our sex life” and “have sex with me right now or I’ll leave you forever.”
(Psst… did you catch on that LBT isn’t a “her”? OH MY GOD THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING, amiright?)
This isn’t unique to rape! Every area of the law realizes that you can violate someone’s consent even if you never say magic “I’m violating your consent now” words. If you tell a shopowner “it’d be a shame if anything happened to your business” and they pay you protection money, you don’t get to stand up in court and say “but I was just stating an opinion and they gave me a gift. Is it illegal to have opinions now?” because everyone who knows how human communication works knows damn well what you were really saying.
And no, the law does not just bite their nails and go “oh no we can’t prosecute, no magic words, it was just an opinion” to people who run protection schemes. Because pretending to be stupid actually isn’t an ironclad defense against incredibly transparent coercion.
Ah! I see how it works now. A person isn’t a rapist unless that person has been convicted in court! A person can rape somebody, but it’s not rape until a judge says it is! Any rape victim who accuses someone of being a rapist is a liar UNTIL a jury convicts his/her rapist!
(Roberta’s a pedantic troll and obviously doesn’t understand that rape is rape even when it can’t be proven in court.)
Aw, Roberta, you’re such a sweetheart. C’mon, make up your goddamn mind! Was I under raped or not? Is crying in the fetal position from emotional pressure duress or not? Is complete lack of responsiveness rapey or not? Did I just cry too easily, or was I too docile? Was his badgering and denigrating me until I cried reasonable or not? I swear, you’re like a revolving door of opinion here. Do you need more detail? Do I need to drag his exact words out of my brain from all those years ago to reassure you?
C’mon, Roberta, throw me a bone here. I mean, this guy is still walking around completely free with no restrictions or anything, and you don’t even know who he is, but I’m sure he desperately needs your defending. I mean, he might have… I don’t know. Anonymous people on the Internet DISLIKING him or something. WE CAN’T HAVE THAT.
@holly
The difference is, holly, that someone who runs a protection racket is implicitly threatening another person with illegal activity. Arson is illegal. Threatening arson (even implicitly) to get someone to agree to your terms is likewise illegal.
Breaking up with someone is not illegal. Threatening someone with a breakup in order to get them to agree to your terms is likewise not illegal.
That is a false analogy. Implicit threats of violence or confinement are enough to make sex non consensual. You don’t have to explicitly say: “have sex or I’ll break your legs,” but you have to objectively intimidating. To the point where someone reasonably fears violence if they don’t consent.
This seems like stating the obvious in extremis, but, abuse doesn’t have to leave bruises to still be criminally abusive, Roberta:
http://www.forthepeople.com/domestic_abuse.html
Using one form of abuse to set up diminished capacity in an intended victim, in order to engage in another form of abuse is still….rape. You can call it assault, if that seems more palatable to the phrasing war you are engaged in.
Yeah, troll. Deliberately obtuse troll is obtuse.
Roberta: I’ve read it, and dozens like it. They don’t support their position.
More to the point, I’ve read you. You are, at best, a victim blaming rape apologist.
If you believe what you say, you are possessed of evil beliefs. If you don’t… you are just evil. Your defense of a narrow, and abusive, definition of rape, is vile.
Your vilification of those who are raped with means other than violence, is repulsive. You are arguing to make rape easier to commit. You insist that a very narrow definition of rape be both the legal, and cultural understanding.
You are working to make women who are raped at other then the fear of life, or limb, marginalised, mocked, shamed, criminal.
Sincerity in an evil enterprise, doesn’t absolve you of the effects of your actions. So even that (if you are truly so confused as to believe the idea that anyone who isn’t physically restrained can therefore be deemed to have freely assented to sex, and so has, “consented”) that doesn’t change the facts:
You argue for a definition of consent which makes rape more widespread. You want to punish women who are raped: other than with physical coercion. You are upset that people who like women think you are full of shit.
Let me get the violin and play you a sad song.
Call me crazy, guys, but I’m getting the impression from her ignorance that Roberta isn’t actually a lawyer.
Also GODDAMMIT ROBERTA. I’m a MAN!
Also Roberta, my hypothetical rape trial can also convict me for drinking while female. Because you know rape happens when women drink right? So what was I doing acting like a normal person out having a couple beers with some friends when I should have known I was setting myself up, amiright?
And I was at a bar…seducing men I completely ingored by my mere presence.
Roberta, I’d patiently explain how emotional abuse works, but I’m pretty sure you know and are just playing dumb.
If someone has sex for a reason other than wanting sex or freely, clear-headedly deciding to have sex, that’s rape. It may not be provable legally, because our legal system is kinda fucked like that. But it’s not fucking consensual sex!
Sex isn’t Freeze Tag. It’s not some game where if you don’t get away then gotcha, you consented! Do you realize how stupid you look telling someone they chose to have sex when they’re right here telling you they did not? What does “chose” even mean to you?
@pecunium
I didn’t do any of those things. Look up your jurisdictions definition of consent. It will be something very much like: “A voluntary agreement to sexual activity that was not procured through: violence, threats of violence towards yourself or others, threats of confinement towards yourself or others, and unlawful blackmail“.
It doesn’t have to be physical coercion. Threats of physical coercion or other violence will suffice. The threats don’t have to be explicit either, but they have to be reasonably clear.
LBT gotta love the heteronormative viewpoints. And that was a really shitty thing to happen to you, I’m sorry it did. Even shittier is the fact that after all that time you’re still forced to defend yourself and your experience.
Christ! Some days I hate human beings.
I’m pretty sure most of the people who claim to “Be the Law!” on any board are full of crap.
Victim blaming is pretty expected in the arsenal, contextually, of those who are offended by The Southern Poverty Law Center article.
When in doubt, try to push the pointing finger of doom onto someone else! I know I err on the naive, but Roberta is BORING.
Anyone ever seen a demographic on how other hate groups over lap with MRA followers? Is there a big bunch of men trolling back roads, drinking, waving guns, and all saying the same stuff? Banjos? Chewing tobacco?
Now Amphitrite, my father chews tobacco and he’s not an MRA. He’s an emotionally and physically abusive monster, an alcoholic, and a homophobe, but even he thinks the MRM is insane.
…And that’s terrible.
Holly,
They can call it rape if they like, it just isn’t legally. I have no problem with your definition of consent. We can debate what situations allow someone to freely consent or not.
He didn’t *choose* to have sex, but me might have *chosen* to have sex in order to prevent his partner from leaving. If he was in a genuinely abusive situation, that makes it more complicated, but the laws on sexual assault don’t make exceptions for someone who is in the emotional thrall of another person, they can’t. It’s just too slippery of a notion.
Sorry for my legalistic pedantry, but felony law doesn’t generally leave much room for nuances of those kind. It needs to be concrete and objective.
Pecunium–
“You are working to make women who are raped at other then the fear of life, or limb, marginalised, mocked, shamed, criminal.”
Dude, too narrow. Roberta ain’t just working to do that for WOMEN reporting rape. She’s doing it for EVERYBODY. I mean, I really doubt that me being a guy will make her suddenly pull (another) face-heel turn.
At least she’s, uh, consistent? Or do I have to give up my man card because I cried or something?
Also, how do you fight to prevent rape by focussing on the tiny percentage offalse accusations instead of the 90 plus percent of actual rapes?
Oh wait…you don’t.
So tell me Roberta…why so eager to make rape disappear, or emotional abuse disappear, or to pretend consent requires special psychic powers? If you were someone I was talking to in real life, I’d be looking to make my consent loud and clear by disappearing post haste.
Roberta: But… threats to abandon someone… not coercive. Nope. And if someone says yes, we must presumptively assume it is completely dispositive.
And yes, you are doing, in this very comment, everything I said you were doing. If it’s not force, or a threat of force, which is used to extract the magic word; so that you can call it “consensual”, you don’t accept it.
But you are on a huge hobby horse that false rape is a huge problem. In one way you are correct, using your, facile; and fatuous, definition of consent, there are a lot of real rapes which would, technically, not be rape (as with LBT… care to actually answer him?).
And you are doing your utmost (which is thankfully fairly pathetic, if this is any example of your advocacy), to make sure that rape is easier for rapists to perpetrate.
The same way you are ignoring the violence which runs so wide and deep in the movement.
Except in the case of every other felony.
If someone badgers and browbeats you into giving them money, the law doesn’t say “it was a gift, because technically you could have chosen not to!”
If someone sneaks into your house and says “I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to be here, nobody told me not to,” the law doesn’t say “they were your guest, because you never told them no!”
If someone tells you “I’ll break up with you and no one will ever love you again unless you sign this contract,” the law doesn’t say “that’s a totally valid contract, because he has the right to break up with you!”
Rape is actually the only case where lawyers (or more often pretend Internet lawyers) pretend to be completely incapable of comprehending nuance.
Oh Roberta! I’m so disappointed! Nothing to say on legal intoixication? Not going to tell me I’m not drunk enough. Come on roberta, be a better troll!
Roberta
I’m not using the legal definition. Because, shock of all shocks, that’s not the only definition. (Since you know, depending on the area, as a man, I CAN’T be legally raped unless someone shoves a penis up my ass. Which I think even you in your pedantry can see is too narrow.)
http://www.wellingtonrapecrisis.org.nz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4&Itemid=4
@pecunium
Who says threatening to end a relationship isn’t coercive? I certainly didn’t. I said it wasn’t unlawfully coercive. Because it’s not.
If it were, then every woman who threatened or implicitly threatened divorce if their husband didn’t take them out more would be guilty of kidnapping and unlawful detention.
“I didn’t want to see Wicked, officer. She coerced me into it!”
Now you’re the one being deliberately obtuse, Holly.
If your friend nags you to lend them money and you eventually do in order to shut them up, it’s not theft. Go to the police and try if you don’t believe me.
Your breaking and entering analogy also fails because no one ever gave them permission to enter. I’m speaking of cases where consent is explicitly given.
Your contract analogy is also false. Go ahead and try to invalidate a contract by claiming you boyfriend threatened to break up with you if you didn’t. Argue duress in that case, the judge will probably slap you.
* didn’t sign it.
that is
So you’ve never been in a courtroom like, ever, then?
Seen a lot of contracts voided by threatened breakups there, lauralot?
Where do you practice, space?
Roberta, the law, and even more so morality, is not this goddamn game of “Simon Says,” and consent to sex is not proven by “BUT SIMON DIDN’T SAY!” These are real people with real lives and emotions. Shit is sometimes more complex than “if you possibly could have escaped and you didn’t, then you consented.”
I don’t know what the fuck else I can tell you.
Except this:
“In contract law an unconscionable contract is one that is unjust or extremely one-sided in favor of the person who has the superior bargaining power. An unconscionable contract is one that no person who is mentally competent would enter into and that no fair and honest person would accept.”
You’ll notice that there is not IRONCLAD SIMON SAYS definition of “unjust,” “one-sided” or “fair and honest.” That’s because people making shitty contracts would (and already do) fuck around on the exact boundaries of those things if they were precisely defined, and people would still get screwed. So we have to make subjective judgements and rely on our “that doesn’t seem okay” instincts. This is not a fatal flaw in the system. This is the only reason the system works at all.
I’ll tell you where I don’t practice: anywhere the judges slap people.
I mean, I know you were being stupid on purpose, but you’re really not helping your credibility here.
Roberta–
Can you at least see what happened to me as ABUSIVE? No law or legalese involved at all. No standards expect common human decency.
Also, can I say thank you to all manboobzers here? Because suddenly, I actually, truly get why the hell you guys do what you do. I’ve never seen so many people actually stick up for me before–normally it’s a “don’t feed the troll” thing so it’s just ignored to avoid conflict.
I’ve had a very, very shitty week. (Roberta, actually, was the LEAST shitty part of it!) But y’all’re making me feel shit tons better. I actually feel like a decent human being now!
As opposed to fluffy pretty emotional abuse: “I know you’re “crying and curled up in a fetal position” but I can’t have sex right now I will abandon you”.
Lawyer troll is the new dictionary troll: rape only is as real as the chance you have to get a condemnation for the rapist.
@holly
I don’t disagree with your morality. I’m speaking of what is, and what reasonably could be, the law.
The standard isn’t possibly escaped. If that were the case then if you could have conceivably fought off your knife wielding attacker then it wouldn’t be legally rape.
The standard is reasonably escaped. If you could have have reasonably said no given the circumstances. Not possibly said no.
What you referenced applies to the content of a contract. Not the means of pressuring someone to sign it. The standard for duress in contract law is (you guess it): whether or not you could have reasonably refused to sign it. Threatening to end a voluntary arrangement (like a business partnership or a relationship) is not enough to create legal duress.
Comments exploded quickly here, so I went back and read. I have something to bring up from an earlier comment of Roberta’s.
She said “because feminism does nothing to address men’s issues”
Stop.
The next part is legit if true she said fem groups have opposed legislation that helps men. Allegedly. (Knowing the MRM tout this, I would definitely need NOW’s perspective, because they are filthy liars, but I digress.)
Let’s go back. So Roberta, statements like these are why posters don’t trust you as being sincere. Does it make any sense to say, “Because the men’s rights movement does nothing to address women’s issues?”
Does that make sense to you? Are you concerned that the men’s rights movement does nothing to address women’s issues? Of course you’re not. Now, how much of a brain does one need to figure that sentence out? “Because feminism does nothing to address men’s issues.”…. Come on now. how smart or sincere does one have to be to know that statement is complete bollocks. First of all, it’s wrong (gender roles and patriarchy hurt everyone). But let’s say it’s not wrong, and feminism does only women’s issues. OK. Do men’s rights groups help women? Does anyone ask them this? Why should they? It’s just stupid beyond belief.
And as far as the legislation goes. Gee, there could be NO issues with any legislation hurting women if MRM got all their wishes magically granted, would there?
Why aren’t men’s right’s activists talking about the war on women right now and birth control and abortions?
Just for shits and giggles:
Calif. Penal Code &sec;261 (a)Rape is an act of sexual intercourse accomplished with a person not the spouse of the perpetrator, under any of the following circumstances:
(2) Where it is accomplished against a person’s will by means of force, violence, duress, menace, or fear of immediate and unlawful bodily injury on the person or another.[emphasis added] [the same applies to married persons, under the section on Spousal Rape. I have chosen not to duplicate the basic text]
(D)(7)(b)As used in this section, “duress” means a direct or implied threat of force, violence, danger, or retribution sufficient to coerce a reasonable person of ordinary susceptibilities to perform an act which otherwise would not have been performed, or acquiesce in an act to which one otherwise would not have submitted. The total circumstances, including the age of the victim, and his or her relationship to the defendant, are factors to consider in appraising the existence of duress.[emphasis added]
So… LBT was raped, per Calif. law. One can’t use the threat of abandonment to get that weaseling consent you keep trying to use to paper over the crime of rape.
Just to clarify the issue of “consent”.
&sec; 261.6 In prosecutions under Section 261, 262, 286, 288a, or 289, in which consent is at issue, “consent” shall be defined to mean positive cooperation in act or attitude pursuant to an exercise of free will.
LBT’s description of the event is such that a reasonable person could conclude the statutory definition of consent was not obtained.
It was rape.
&sec;263 The essential guilt of rape consists in the outrage to the person and feelings of the victim of the rape. Any sexual penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the crime.
That one made me laugh so hard I practically needed to change my underpants.
@LBT
Absolutely it was abusive. What happened to you is terrible and I hope the man responsible is flattened by a mac truck. I’m sorry if I came across as insensitive. That’s a terrible thing to have gone through, and I hope you’re doing ok.
Better than in her head like you, Roberta. My cat is a better lawyer than you.
Damn… I screwed up the § marks.
@hellkell: I think the best part is that I am not, nor have ever claimed to be, a lawyer, and I still have a better grasp on the system.
@peniculum
No it isn’t. What LBT described is not duress under California law. Those statues refer to employers and the like. As well as guardians in control of the lives of minors. “Have sex with me or you’re fired.” “Have sex with me or I’ll put you in the box again.” Those situations are unlawful blackmail and duress.
They don’t apply to two adults in a relationship. Not if the only thing threatened is ending said relationship.
>>My cat is a better lawyer than you.
In the case of The People against That Red Laser Pointer Dot, honorable judge Miss Snugglebottoms presiding.
Roberta–
Well, thank GOD. I was THIS close to giving up my philosophy of optimism, yeesh.
And thanks, but I’m doing fine. It was a long time ago, and I am in a much happier place. You’re definitely giving me a good blood pressure workout, because I still find your careful measuring of whether I was properly raped or not utterly offensive, but at least you’ve shown enough humanity that I can’t hate you.
(PS: I was fifteen at the time. He was twenty-one. Does this change anything, out of curiosity?)
Roberta: . I’m sorry if I came across as insensitive.
Not for being insensitive, but for coming off that way. I say that because you have, more than once, come back to make a thoroughly insensitive point. You feel bad, but it still wasn’t rape, and LBT wasn’t coerced, and we should just what?
Accept that rape isn’t rape, because no one pulled a gun?
Screw that. It was rape. It was even legally rape, if it happened in Calif. But the legality of it doesn’t matter. I am calling your morals into account. At best you are being an embodiment of the D&D concept of, “Lawful Good”. The law doesn’t make it a crime, so it’s not, and we drive on.
But you are also advocating two corollaries. 1: The law doesn’t need to be changed, as per the definition of rape. 2: The law does need to be changed as per the definition/response to false rape.
Now, you might merely be arguing the social stigma of “false rape” needs to be increased, but you are doing that while insisting the social definition of “real rape” needs to be kept to the narrow set of rules you are laying out for consent.
So you want rape to be narrowly understood, but false rape to be widely understood.
That’s heinous. It’s foul, and despicable and inhumane. That reflects on you as a person. Hidebound, and insensitive.
@LBT
Yeah, it’s now statutory rape. It also creates an added dimension with respect to the abusive nature of the situation. Minors are given special consideration.
Jesus, I’m sorry. I’m sorry if it seemed like I was brushing off what happened to you or arguing that it was ok. It’s not ok at all, I’m was just arguing that it wasn’t illegal. I just got caught up in pedantic, definitional discussion we were having.
LBT, jedi hugs. I spent a long time trying to understand what I could have done to handle my abuse(s) situations better. Which was futile. Also futile, trying to get explanations from people who agreed with my abuser. Again, futile.
It takes a special kind of entitlement/obtuseness/lack of experience for someone to come onto boards especially designed to question a topic, then insist they know more than anyone else there, including the person who made the site.
Trying to get validation from that mindset is pretty much the exact “head meets brick wall” scenario. Talk to people who want to help, not argue your experience. Talk here, talk where you feel safe.
Lots of us here, and even more – sadly – on the planet, understand. It helps to know that.
The guy that hurt you is a jerk. The end.
@pennie
keep readin’
Oh, and for funsies with the theft analogy, in New York state, it counts as larceny by extortion if a person obtains property if they obtained it because they threatened to:
New York Penal Law § 155.05(e)(9)
Tell me again how unworkable and unthinkable it is to discuss coercion and extortion outside of threats of physical violence.
Roberta–
You are very, very lucky that I am not fifteen anymore. Imagine you had a fifteen-year-old son (or brother, or nephew, or friend, whatever does it for you). Imagine that he came to you telling you he’d been raped and you had this discussion (purely logistical, mind you) about whether it was truly rape or not.
Now do you understand WHY everyone’s responding the way they are? Now do you understand WHY I told absolutely no one for so many years?
I’m not fifteen anymore, and I’m able to hold my ground about this now. But when I was fifteen, it was people like you that made me think I was crazy, a liar, a fuck-up. It was people like you that meant I avoided romantic attachment for so many years.
My experiences are not just your arguments for definition. It was something real that happened to me. And I do not appreciate it being flattened into fuel for pedantry.
Your apology is accepted, because I actually do believe you. But I’d really like you to THINK about it, and realize that I ran into FAR more people like you than I did people like my husband, who listened to me and accepted me. That is a SYSTEMIC problem. That is an abuse of ALL people, not just women. That is something that needs to change.
Keep backpeddling Roberta! We’ve had some pretty good ones here so you’ll have to work hard on that backstroke.
Roberta: No it isn’t. What LBT described is not duress under California law. Those statues refer to employers and the like. As well as guardians in control of the lives of minors. “Have sex with me or you’re fired.” “Have sex with me or I’ll put you in the box again.” Those situations are unlawful blackmail and duress.
Um… no. §261 makes no limit as to who is applying the duress, nor does it limit the categories of duress, nor does it define the scope. Here, I’ll repeat some of §261(B)(b) The total circumstances, including the age of the victim, and his or her relationship to the defendant, are factors to consider in apprising the existence of duress.
Nope… nothing about employers, landlords (though in an intimate partnership one partner may be, effectively, the landlord… something the court might lump in with, “The total circumstance… and his or her relationship to the defendant”.
But if you want to find a statute which does so limit the scope of “duress” as it applies to CPC §261, or some relevant case law which does the same, I’m all ears.
Here, just in case you want some pointers, is what a rape specialising firm in Calif. says about it.
Shouse Group, Calif. Rape. They don’t seem to agree with your interpretation, and it’s their area of practice.
I’m sorry, but Roberta makes me sick. First she’s acting like she the expert on what rape is, now she saying to people who experienced it that they’re misconstruing things…ugh.
She did pull this shit in Shakesville, right? Only she pretended to be a cop at that place.
@darkcathing
absolutely none of which are applicable to nagging (unless it crosses the line to unlawful harassment) or threatening to end a relationship. You must be causing some unlawful harm to the person to pry them from their money.
It’s not just threats of violence, but it is threats of unlawful harm or blackmail. Rape law is similar if it contains a line on duress or coercion. Which my state (Illinois) does not.
@peniculum
The statute doesn’t explicitly impose those limits, but trust me, that’s how the law is interpreted in practice. California is somewhat unique in it’s rather vague and expansive definition of duress, but it’s still interpreted fairly narrowly.
Even in California no one has ever or will ever be convicted of rape because they threatened to end a relationship with their adult partner.
Are you trying to rude, or are you just that clueless about how not to shoot yourself in the foot when you’re claiming to have a discussion in good faith?
@lauralot
This is a troll comment, right? You’re telling me not be rude because it undermines my claim of good faith? YOU’RE telling me this?
I’m not claiming to have a discussion in good faith with you, because you’re clearly here to troll and I’m not going to act as though you aren’t.
You, on the other hand, are undermining yourself at every point for no apparent reason.
RE: Amphitrite
I understand completely. In my opinion, the worst part of the abuse wasn’t even the abuse itself (though that, of course, certainly sucked). It was the complete soul-sucking belief that I DESERVED it that was the real breaker.
But like I said, it was a long time ago, and I’m in a much happier place with the best partner ever. So I have the fabulously awesome luxury of saying: it doesn’t hurt me anymore. (Now there’s something I never thought I’d be able to say!)
LBT I think that’s something we’ll all be praying every victim will be able to say.
RE: pillowinhell (any chance of getting context for your name?)
Yeah, most definitely. I feel I was lucky; though it took me years to acknowledge what happened, when I did, I was equipped with a fantastic support system of friends, system members, and partner. I wish everyone who went through such shit had that; I never would’ve made the first step without them.
Roberta, stop trying to be cute with the name misspelling. It’s not a good look on you.
LBT, I’m sorry she’s been a complete ass to you, and I’m glad you’re in a much better place.
LBT, that is so awesome. Kudos for the work you put into getting to this place. And welcome to THIS place.
<3
LBT, my name stems from two things: 1) as one of those evil single mothers presumed to be a welfare queen, I was working two jobs, walking four hours a day to get my daughter toi and frim the daycare I paid for myself and go to work, plus hand scrubbing everypiece of laundry and cooking everything froim scratch on four or five hours a sleep a night. I was working months on end without days off and the end result was my being so tired I’d have accepted a pillow in hell had the devil offered one. And for eight solid hours sleep, I’d have considered it a bargain! 2) those who know me know that I can be either a real comfort or a real pain in the ass! My familys war cry for me is “be the bitch we know you can be!” That’s something that only gets pulled out when the situation calls for it, so if I’m fighting for you its all good..if not…
@LBT, So sorry about what happened and glad you feel supported here and that things are better.
I noticed that our lawyer friend referenced an article alleging bias against men in family courts earlier. On the off chance anyone read that, I thought I’d point to an article giving a different perspective:
Systemic Bias in Family Court–or just Selective Fact-Finding (Hope that html works, since I have a crappy track record.)
It’s written by a (non-anonymous) lawyer, and is worth a read on its own merits, but also because the lawyer sticks around for the comments. When the predictable MRAs show up, he responds with both clarity and compassion. It’s a good reminder that there are some lawyers out there that are genuinely good people.
a) peculinum is such a weaksauce insult that I hesitate to insult insults by grouping it in with them
b) darkcathing is just nonsensical idiocy
c) pennie …. really?
*peniculum
At best you are being an embodiment of the D&D concept of, “Lawful Good”. The law doesn’t make it a crime, so it’s not, and we drive on.
Nah, Lawful Good ultimately prioritizes morality over the letter of the law. The most generous assessment I could give is Lawful Neutral.
RE: Hellkell
At least she ain’t misgendering me anymore. I’m trans, so that REALLY gives me aggro.
RE: Amphitrite
Thanks for the warm, warm welcome! I found it through Holly, actually; I was a follower of her blog first, and then found this place. Normally I’m of the school of ‘ignore the troll, do not feed,’ but I’m definitely enjoying the change of pace!
RE: pillowinhell
As someone who right now can’t really function without nine hours of sleep I FEEL YOUR PAIN. That schedule sounds grueling, and I hope to god you have a better one now!
Where in that statute do you find the phrase “unlawful harm”. Nowhere. Shit, this is statute reading 101. “Unlawful” is a term with a very specific meaning, “material” is a very different legal term, the NY legislature intentionally chose the latter. That’s a substantially different element.
Also, sadly, this is not the first time I’ve been called a “thing” by a bigot or asshole I was arguing with…
All this has been a fantastic demonstration of what MRM defenders can do for men, by the way.
By the way LBT, I’m really sorry you have up put up with this kind of bullshit.