For A Voice for Men, and its Edmonton offshoot, terrifying women is a form of “human rights activism.”
Men’s Rights Edmonton activist at work
So the self-described “human rights activists” at A Voice for Men have found three more women to harass. Here’s the story, which for many of you will have a depressingly familiar ring:
Members of Men’s Rights Edmonton, a small group that is for all intents and purposes a local chapter of A Voice for Men, has been putting up pictures targeting Lise Gotell, the chair of women’s and gender studies at the University of Alberta. The pictures, which seem inspired by “Wanted” posters of yore, feature a large portrait of Gotell and the caption:
Theft isn’t black. Bank fraud isn’t Jewish. And rape isn’t male.
“Just because you’re paid to demonize men doesn’t mean rape is gendered. Don’t be that bigot.
Gotell’s crime? She was involved in what appears to have been a remarkably effective rape awareness campaign focusing on date rape and featuring the slogan “Don’t Be That Guy.”
A Voice for Men took exception to the campaign because, even thought it did deal with the male victims of rape, it didn’t devote equal time to the problem of evil, false-accusing “girls.” No, really. Men’s Rights Edmonton Activists put up “satirical” versions of the campaign’s posters with the slogan “Don’t Be that Girl.” Now, MR-E and AVFM, at least according to the “argument” advanced on their new poster, seem to be upset that the campaign didn’t devote equal time to the problem of female rapists. [Note: this paragraph has been corrected; see note at end of piece.]
Gotell spoke out against the posters, and now Men’s Rights Edmonton and AVFM are doing their best to smear her as a “bigot.” Because she doesn’t believe that women are responsible for half of all rapes.
Since this is not actually true — more on this in a later post — it’s hard to see how this makes her a bigot.
As a rule, I don’t support tearing down the posters of one’s ideological enemies. Free speech and all that. But these posters are different: they’re slanderous personal attacks designed to harass an individual. Were they posted in my neighborhood I would tear them down.
And evidently that’s what some people in Edmonton have been doing.
Indeed, one recent night, several members of Men’s Rights Edmonton claim to have caught two women doing just that. While they don’t seem to have video footage of the women tearing down the posters, the MRAs filmed themselves following the women down the street and angrily confronting them for this alleged crime.
They posted the video to YouTube, and AVFM posted it as well, under the typically overheated title “Men’s Rights Edmonton confronts fascists.” They screencapped images of both women from the video and announced their intention to uncover their personal information:
MR-E would like to know the names of these two women so that charges of destruction of property can be laid against them. Also, the world should know the identities of those who seek to silence and censor messages advocating for human rights.
Of course, this is ridiculous. Tearing down a poster that was almost certainly posted illegally in the first place isn’t “destruction of property.” No one is going to be prosecuted for this. The police have better things to do.
But of course that’s not the real intent here. The real intent here is to scare the shit out of these women and other feminists by exposing them to harassment online — like the woman labeled “Big Red” and countless other women who have been targeted by AVFM and other MRAs (sometimes completely erroneously).
AVFM’s Paul Elam gave the game away with an “editor’s note” added to the post:
[A] woman who vandalizes man’s property and then flips him off when he confronts her about it on a dark street at night only acts in this manner because she is certain she has absolutely nothing to fear. Feminists terrified of MHRAs? My ass.
Elam could not have made it any clearer: the main point of this kind of “activism” — which has become AVFM’s bread and butter — is all about intimidating women, not helping men.
AVFM, where terrifying individual women is “human rights activism.”
Here’s the appropriate response to that:
CORRECTION/CLARIFICATION: I rewrote the paragraph starting with “A Voice for Men took exception,” which confused AVRM/MR-E’s current objection to Gotell’s views with its original “argument” against the “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign.
Posted on September 18, 2013, in a voice for men, antifeminism, doxing, drama kings, edmonton, entitled babies, evil women, harassment, imaginary backwards land, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, MRA, not-quite-explicit threats, not-quite-plausible deniability, oppressed white men, paul elam, playing the victim, rape, rape culture, taking pleasure in women's pain, the poster revolution has begun, things that aren't fascism and tagged antifeminism, edmonton, men's rights, misogyny, MRA, rape, rape culture. Bookmark the permalink. 937 Comments.
yah good old AVFM Edmonton have jumped the shark real good on this one. I’m not sure how they keep claiming the 50% of all rapes are committed by women story alive. I debunked Typhonblues BS reading of the CDC study long ago. At this point they’re just flat out lying. But then again they aren’t really known for their ability to tell the truth in the first place in the MRA
Reblogged this on winterdominatrix and commented:
well it all gets nutz from here.
I’d love to see rape as an agendered crime (I do see it in that way in the sense that all genders should get equivalent punishment for the same thing). However, MRAs are huge atgendering rape. AVfM rape apologia, their victim blaming and accusations targeted at women, and their points about men being ‘biologically wired’ to rape (she was asking for it by going outside) summarize this quite well.
Also, nice to see they want a police state (prosecution for ripping a poster? Now that’s an effective allocation of public funds!
So do these guys sit by each poster they put up day and night, waiting to film someone removing it?
Seems like, if they honestly gave a shit about female perpetrators of sexual assault, they would have made posters telling women to ask for consent. If they did that, I’d be supporting them, as I hope most people would. Instead, though, first they encouraged victim blaming/disbelief, and now they’re just full out harassing people again, because lord knows they can’t go ten minutes without committing libel and personal attacks on private people. They honestly just can’t risk helping a man if it doesn’t somehow harm a woman in the process. What would be the point, amiright?
Where’s the link for that debunking?
Ah, so after JTO’s boxcutter thing, this must be the next blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women poster-tearers? The MRA Poster Wars is truly the epic saga of our era. I love how Elam’s note basically says “Women not afraid to walk somewhere at night? Unacceptable!” like it’s somehow a moral fault that his cronies intimidation tactics arent working.
Yea, magnesium, they don’t care about female perpetrators, they care that men aren’t accused. They really don’t care about rape at all beyond not wanting men to be accused.
I’ve always thought that when AVFM, GWW, and other MRAs who try to explain why they did their “Don’t Be that Girl” poster parade, the explanations always seems mixed up. What I mean by this is that their arguments come from a lot of different directions and don’t really make sense when brought together.
For example, their complaint about the the original rape awareness campaign “Don’t be that Guy” is that they think that it erases the existence of female rapists. However, there posters aren’t suggesting that women can rape too. Actually the posters are about how MRAs think that women flippantly “lie” about being raped for “reasons.” So… the MRA response to a perceived erasure of female rapists is to argue that women lie about being raped?
Their reasons for posting those posters aren’t consistent or well thought out (later which is obvious). I kind of think that it’s more about the spectacle that MR-Edmonton and AVFM just loves creating, and as a consequence they are trying to create a villain out of Gotell to justify the drama they want to be part of.
Do people who throw around sensationalized community college-level rhetoric like calling people “fascists” and discussing every single minor form of expression as meaning something in relation to the first amendment actually think they sound smart? They sound like college freshmen (Sorry – fresh “people”. Can’t single out men.)
Truly the human rights movement of our time. Fuck them.
Somewhere on AVfM I saw that MR-E admitted they deliberately put the posters up right near a feminist coffee house or book shop or something. So yes, they are putting them up in locations where they are most likely to get torn down or defaced, and then hanging around with video cameras.
1. Someone tell me how to debunk that CDC study, I want to see it because it keeps being brought up by MRAs as the “so there!” when the subject of rape comes up.
2. AVFM isn’t really about helping men but about shutting down women. I feel as if all they want to do is to have us regress to 1950s morals.
@Feminist Bees, it’s almost as if they’re being intellectually dishonest in order to disguise the fact that they are essentially pro-rape. But surely that can’t be the case with the Men’s Rights Activists, heroes of the new millennium?
I love the snitfit they’re having over “their” property being defaced after they’ve vandalized someone else’s. What a bunch of nitwits. Elam really doesn’t get irony.
The CDC responded to part of what MRAs were alleging based on their study.
@Alice Sanguinaria: Actually, A response to the CDC stuff was posted on /r/AMR on reddit.
http://www.reddit.com/r/againstmensrights/comments/1lq3n3/cdc_responds_are_40_of_rapists_women/
@DireSloth, yeah… It’s not surprising, just one of those things that make me wonder what those MRAs who’ve put their names onto these arguments think about in their down time. I mean, do they actually think about these things all the way through? Because if lack of thought is obvious (which it is), then what kinds of people actively work to be seen on the news talking about a campaign that is disconnected from the very subject they are claiming to address.
Of course, it’s very reasonable to guess that it’s plain intellectually dishonest, but those kinds of realizations have to keep MRAs up at night… lol.
@Alice Sanguinaria
I wrote this a while ago – maybe you’ll find it interesting: http://mellowness.dreamwidth.org/14991.html
It’s a refutation of argument that concludes that rape is an agendered crime by citing the CDC study.
Yeah, these dishonest assholes are real fond of using 12-month data instead of lifetime to try and bolster their shitty little biases.
It could be that a woman who is afraid on that dark street at night would flip him off in hopes of scaring him away. So not only is Elam saying he wants her to be afraid, he doesn’t acknowledge how common it is to react with hostility when you’re threatened. Sorry, I’m having a tough time wording this, but basically flipping someone off =/= not afraid.
@cloudiah
Wow. That’s just..illogical. It’s like they don’t want to try to convince people of their viewpoints, they just wanna fight.
Wow, these guys are really something.
I’ve had folks tearing down my garage sale and Sneak’s pet-sitting posters. TRANSPHOBIA!
Except not.
@cloudiah
Followed your links and found this.
::giggles:: and the next one said “wake up sheeple” non ironically, I believe. As MEN, shouldn’t mras be more easily swayed by stats/logic/w/e.
@LBT
Folks torn down Sneak’s pet sitting posters? :( That is sad.
Also, WTF, the idea of chasing down someone who tore my posters down in the middle of the night to interrogate them as creepy and douchey as hell. WHO DOES THAT?
Right. These douchebags.
Exactly. I had one experience when I was young, in which I wasn’t afraid of being raped, but afraid of being mugged. So, I acted like a crazy badass. I threw my piece of pizza into the street and said, “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU ASSHOLES WANT?!” Then, not waiting for an answer, I got into my car, locked the doors, and left as fast as I could.
They might not have actually been about to mug me, but the point is that I felt threatened. I was afraid. And so I put on a hostile display, because I didn’t know what else to do. I sure as hell didn’t react that way because I felt I had nothing to fear.
Ugh for the record, most posters were torn down by MEN I know a few of them, they swept Whyte Ave tearing them all down. We don’t want this in our city. Gawd I just love living in the bloody MRA capital of the world.
RE: Marie
Sure, at random times ALL posters are ripped down around town. I haven’t figured out the rhythm, so we can avoid them.
@Feminist Bees, I just had a mini revelation, actually. They probably don’t think their views all the way through because they view their movement as being exclusively a battle between men and women. The notion that everything, even human rights, are a “battle” that must be “won” is a genuinely harmful standard that the patriarchy holds men to, and the MRAs would be doing real good challenging that standard except *they completely believe in it.*
@LBT
That sucks. How could one hate pet sititng posters?
(tell me if I’m bugging you Idk why I got fixated on this. I’m not sure why. BUT PET SITTING IS AWESOME HOW COULD THEY DO THAT?)
I love this comment on the AVFM post:
“I do have one thing to say at what one of the guys said to these cretins. He said the word ‘ladies.’
I think it’s high time we stop using that word when talking to these lowlife cowards who espouse the destruction of men’s lives.
They are not a lady’s backside in my opinion. For a woman to be eligible to be referred to as a Lady, she will need to behave in a much better manner than the vast majority of women do today. She must be respectful of men and boys equally to females and she will never place herself or her sex above the opposite sex.
Knowing the above. It is my opinion that the overwhelming majority of females on this planet are not eligible to be referred to as ‘ladies.’
Just sayin, is all!”
I wonder how these guys would react if feminist speech was filled with this kind of attitude towards males.
Just sayin, is all!
@totlent,
You’re right. If someone regendered that comment to make it about ‘gentlemen’, then MRA’s would be in an uproar and doxx a dozen random women in retaliation.
@DireSloth, that is certainly true. The way that AVFM writers take to their issues and opponents, the goal is to maintain gender conflict.
Take feminist men as an example, MRAs love finding them and using their gender and self-identification a feminist as a prop to solidify the appearance of the conflict. For these MRAs, the idea of “compassion for men and boys” flies out the window when the men and boys in question are feminists. It’s an essential part of their discourse to reinforce the idea that being a man and being a feminist are in conflict. This requires them to demonize feminist men using special gendered language (the very kind of language they accuse feminists of using towards all men).
Male rape of women being a crime in the legal sense, even though it has so much cultural support, is probably one of the things that burns these guys. I’m pretty sure they think it should be one of the go-to ways for men to legitimately control and punish women for breathing out of turn and so on.
Oh noez, not eligible to be referred to as a lady?!? Whatever will I do? I fear I may come down with the vapors. *swoon*
Fuck off, AVFM. And double fuck off for the apparent goal of your organization being to make me terrified to walk at night without a male escort. Human rights my fat ass.
Fine by me if they don’t me a lady, I’ll just keep calling them what they are: assholes, each and every one.
I would describe the way they act is like they’re just playing a game. If you discuss an important issue with them, they are more concerned with creating gotcha’s and “checkmates” than actually learning from anyone else. I think they read this and took it to heart.
Thanks everyone for the rebuttal posts. :)
totlent – MRAs and CAM apologists are the same, in regards to hypocrisy. They’ll cry fowl when their despised enemy (feminists, “Big Pharma”) do something like call all males “too inferior to be called gentlemen” or pay off politicians/cover up studies unfavorable to them. And yet they’ll happily accept, even condone, the same behavior when they do it themselves.
Their lack of self awareness and sense of irony makes me want to laugh and cry.
@Bionic Mommy, right, and the reason they treat it as a game (albeit a very serious one) is because they’re too privileged to realize these issues are actually important to some peoples lives. The only thing they have to loose is face, which they seem determined to defend past the point of reason.
Does that mean they’re beak-ering again?
This might not be sufficiently straightforward misogyny for this website, but this has been making the rounds on facebook today, and making me crazy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10316807/Sorry-daughters-your-parents-will-never-approve-of-your-partner.html
I teach evolution– this article couldn’t be worse science writing.
[A] woman who vandalizes man’s property and then flips him off when he confronts her about it on a dark street at night only acts in this manner because she is certain she has absolutely nothing to fear.
Or she’s, y’know, brave. I understand courage is an alien concept to these guys, inasmuch as mild rudeness from a woman they’re trying to bully reduces them to Jell-O.
This is a much more respectable poster battle:
Although short, balding and rotund, Coombs was pompous and vain, and thought himself to be a ladies’ man. He believed this formed the basis of his dispute with Emperor Norton. Norton had torn down some posters that Coombs had put up in Montgomery Street and Coombs reported him to the police. As it was not a criminal offence the police told him they could do nothing, so in an attempt to raise funds for a civil action he sold his story to the Alta California newspaper. When the reporter asked him why Norton would have done such a thing Coombs replied that he “was jealous of my reputation with the fairer sex.”
Manosphere fallacy one-o-one. Comparing marginalized groups to a privileged group. Face palm.
But then I forget men are oppressed because they can’t get all the sex they want.
@Emily
I’m too embarrassed to read that article because after reading just the first couple sentences I assumed it was going to be full of science failures and my mom (the scientist) is sitting right next to me. Also, you already said it was misogynistic..
Yeah. As a male survivor of sexual violence, I can’t say I’ve EVER felt that the MRM gives a shit about me, except as a blunt object to beat women with. In fact, since a man was my rapist, I get the sense they consider me a failed representative–they need (1) a man who’s a surivor of rape from a woman, and (2) who generalizes that experience to women as a whole. I do not fit their bill.
Men.
Females.
smh.
Well, if they referred to us as women and girls then they might have to acknowledge that wanting to have sex with the girls is a bit creepy and/or illegal.
Cassandra, they’re pretty open about wanting to have sex with young girls. Remember, Judgy Bitch clearly laid out how girls lead men on? MRAs eat that up with a heaping dose of evo psych.
I still think that using “females” for everyone is partially an attempt to blur the boundaries.
Shaenon – ermagerd, I’d never heard of Coombs (though Emperor Norton has all the win).
Coombs, the man PUAs everywhere could look up to.
cloudiah – I don’t know what’s scarier: the thought that should I open my own blog that I’ll be doxed for speaking out against MRAs, or that MRAs really, really, really want to fuck kids.
Emily – That article is stunning in its lack of logic. How the hell does it make sense for women to pick a partner they can’t mooch off of just so they can mooch off their folks? Or is it a having your cake and eating it too thing? Considering the women in question want to actually be attracted to the guy they’re with. And I love how it’s seemingly reasonable for the parents to be concerned about their prospective SIL’s ethnicity in regards to providing for their daughter. As if his skin tone could cancel out a fat bank account. Because they’re totally not freaking out about having non-Aryan grandchildren.
I think that the “females” is their way of dehumanizing women, and of excluding trans women. They are trying to be all “scientific” by using the term, and I think it really just distances themselves from women and reinforces this bullshit biotruths “women are totes different from men!” like they’re different species or something…
That’s how I see it, SittieKitty. Not that it’s a recent thing, of course; it goes back centuries. But of course MRAs add their own brand of toxic sludge to everything.
Wait, MRAs give a shit about trans women? I can’t even imagine.
Yeah, I agree, I just don’t think they’re worried about being seen as creepy. They’re only worried about it being illegal (so unfair!).
Speaking of unfair misandry, in the last 24 hours they have posted not one, not two, but THREE posts on r/mr about what misandry it is that there’s a tumblr devoted to shaming men who take up too much space (i.e. more than one seat) because they’re splaying their legs wide to give their MASSIVE balls breathing room. One post even has a scientific theory for why men need to do this, which sounds quite a bit like Tom Martin’s theories of hard chairs.
Does anyone know where the hell Augzilliary went? I’m sure I spelled hir name wrong.
LBT – I think that the MRAs only care to say that trans* women are manginas who betrayed their sex and who have decided to try to come to the dark side only to be rejected.
I’m sorry, I should have posted links! (And it’s actually FOUR stories in the last three days.)
1. http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1mfr7g/this_seems_to_be_a_bogus_charge_against_mens/
2. http://www.policymic.com/articles/64043/dear-men-your-balls-are-not-that-big
3. http://judgybitch.com/2013/09/16/people-need-to-stop-being-dicks-on-the-subway-by-taking-up-way-too-much-space-oh-wait-no-just-men-need-to-stop-doing-that-more-equality/
4. http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1mnqrk/why_men_sit_with_their_legs_apart_spoilers_its/
The last is the funniest, Tom Martin-esque STEM science theory of why men do this, with bonus points for we-built-the-subway-for-you justification. (Oh yeah? If you built the subways, why didn’t you just make the seats wider to accommodate your huge balls? Huh?)
cloudiah – If there balls are that massive they should probably go see a doctor.
cloudiah – they would get in a lather about being told to keep their goddamn knees together! I think I know that tumblr. I liked someone’s go-to line for these guys: “My ass is bigger than your balls.”
*their
cloudiah –
A group of people are sitting on a subway train in New York City. A WOMAN gets on the train and sits down on a seat. On the next stop, a DUDEBRO gets on the train, and chooses to sit next to the woman, spreading his legs out and jabbing his knees into her legs.
The woman tries to ignore it for two stops, but eventually it becomes too much for her, and she decides to speak up.
Woman: is nervous Um, excuse me. Um, can you not stretch your legs out so wide? Your knees are jabbing into my thighs, and it’s really uncomfortable.
Dudebro: FUCK YOU NO.
Woman: surprised Why?
Dudebro: WE HUNTED THE MAMMOTH FOR YOU. WE BUILT THE SUBWAY FOR YOU. WE INVENTED COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET FOR YOU AND WE BUILT ALL OF CIVILIZATION WHILE YOU WERE SITTING ON YOUR MISANDRY HARD CHAIRS EATING BON-BONS.
Woman: confused … wait, what? I… I don’t even like bon-bons. Also, um, didn’t Grace Hopper make the first compiler?
Dudebro: MISANDRY!!11!
During this time, we’re passing through another two stops.
Woman: noticing what the next stop is Oh, here’s my stop!
As soon as the train pulls in, woman gets off the train quickly.
Dudebro: yelling at the now closing doors LEAVE YOU BIGOTED [insert your choice of various misogynistic slurs here]. I’LL FIND YOU AND PUT YOU ON REGISTER-HER! I SWEAR IT!
Everyone else on the train looks confused and is left wondering what the hell happened and what is the big deal with the fucking asshole yelling about “misandry” or something.
Child: You are a weirdo.
Dudebro: MISANDRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!
Probably because they’re an anti-feminist/anti-woman propaganda machine. Spreading the message is more important than the message making any sense.
They put posters up in a place where they think they’ll be likely to be torn down so that they can provoke confrontations with women and get them on video, knowing that they can post the footage online and use it to keep the propaganda machine churning.
Then they complain about being silenced while trying to doxx/harass women they don’t like, in the hopes that the women will be intimidated into silence.
Alice, that could be an A Voice for Pierre script!
I am now totally seeing dudebro as Tom Martin.
Or in his case, dudbro (©katz), since Tom’s pretty much the epitome of a dudbro.
There is a logic to it, it’s just that the logic serves to justify something utterly fucked up. They don’t want men to be told not to rape (this is “misandry” apparently), and they don’t want women to report they were raped, or to be believed if they do report it. They want it to be easier for men to rape women and get away with it.
@Alice
Nice (misandric) script. XD
Speaking of doxxing/harassment, there was an article in The Verge a few days ago about the prevalence of harassment and threats against women online:
TW: Rape threats, violence.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/12/4693710/the-end-of-kindness-weev-and-the-cult-of-the-angry-young-man
cloudiah – ^_^ Sure, if the person who does A Voice for Pierre wants do do it.
kittehs – Dudbro. Hah! *is giggling* I stole dudebro from Sinfest though, and I wanted a chance to use it. :P
Marie – *bows* I try. :P