The Daily Beast takes on the Men’s Rights movement — and takes down A Voice for Men’s John Hembling
John Hembling, possibly lying about something
The bad publicity bonanza for Men’s Rights activists continues — and it couldn’t happen to a worse group of people.
Yesterday, the Daily Beast published a long-awaited piece on the Men’s Rights movement, and it’s a doozy. If you’re a regular reader of this site, trust me, you’ll want to read the whole thing, like now. The piece, by R. Tod Kelly, is long — some 6000 words — but worth it.
It’s mostly on the money, but with a few notable flaws.
Here’s what it gets right:
1) It captures the pervasive misogyny of the Men’s Rights movement in general, and of A Voice for Men in particular.
2) In an extended section, it profiles AVFM’s John Hembling, and tears apart some of his most blatant lies — including the now legendary box-cutter incident, in which Hembling claims to have stared down a mob of 20-30 feminists brandishing boxcutters.
As Kelly notes:
Vancouver police records show that there was indeed an altercation in September of 2012 between Hembling and others seeking to tear down men’s rights posters. However, according to the police, Hembling was arguing with two or three people, not being accosted by a “mob” of any size. When questioned by the authorities, neither Hembling nor witnesses mentioned seeing any weapons. …
Curiously enough, Hembling actually videotaped the events and had his AV4M Radio partner Karen Straughan post it online. The discussion with the police has been conveniently edited out, but the rest of the video clearly matches police records and not Hembling’s story. There are only a few young men taking down Hembling’s posters, and the video shows them choosing to ignore him except when he engages them in conversation. One of the men is seen using a box cutter to take down the flyers, but at no time does he use it as a weapon, raise his voice, or threaten Hembling in any way.
Kelly found some troubling, er, discrepancies in another story told by Hembling. Kelly writes:
According to Hembling, sometime around 1995 he was on his way home at 2:00 am after working a night shift when he came upon [a sexual] assault in progress. He says he used his steel-toed boots as weapons to chase off the perpetrator. When the victim was too distraught to speak with him, Hembling says he contacted the police, waited until they arrived, and then quietly left without speaking to them. He says they later tracked him down at his home, where he gave a statement.
It’s hard to know whether this event actually occurred or not. There is no record—at least, not in the Vancouver police files—of Hembling being a material witness to a rape, and police blotters from that time period do not show a crime that matches Hembling’s description. However, this does not necessarily mean the event did not occur. Vancouver police did not fully computerize their data until 2002, and it is possible the police never reported the incident. Hembling claims the incident took place at a specific hospital, where he says he worked as a contractor for 18 months. The address he gives, however, is for a different hospital in a completely different part of the city. This raises the curious question of whether Hembling forget the name of the hospital he contracted with for 18 months, or whether he forget what part of the city he worked in for that same period of time. The real truth of the matter is anyone’s guess, because Hembling wouldn’t comment to The Beast on that or any other matter.
In other words: Cool story, bro.
3) Another thing the story gets right: it makes clear just how little the Men’s Rights movement does to actually help men — and how in many ways it can actually be terribly damaging to men who need real help. As Kelly writes,
the movement’s radicals might … do … immediate damage to those who most desperately need the MRM to succeed.
“When we talk about recovery from trauma and abuse, there were two things that helped me,” says Chris Anderson, executive director of the male-victim advocacy group Male Survivor and a sexual abuse survivor himself. “The first was realizing that I’m not alone; the second was hearing that recovery was possible.” Anderson is quick to dissociate himself from the men’s rights movement: “In [the MRM] people get that first message, that they’re not alone. I don’t know that they ever get the second message. And when they don’t get that second message, it turns into an endless feedback loop and eventually they say, ‘Oh my God, all of society is f**ked.’”
Indeed, Kelly writes:
It is telling to note that of the professional male-victim advocacy organizations I spoke with, every single one specifically asked that I not allow readers to think they were in any way related to the MRM.
But there are also some things that I think the article gets wrong.
1) I think it gives Men’s Rights activists way too much credit for their supposed good intentions. While there are some MRAs who do seem to be motivated at least in part by a sincere desire to help men, most of the MRAs I’ve encountered in the 3 years of doing this blog have clearly been motivated primarily by anger and hatred of feminists — and women in general. They don’t really seem to give a shit about doing anything to actually improve the lives of men — and the paucity of their accomplishments reflects this. In its relatively brief lifespan, AVFM has raised many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Has it set up any shelters or hotlines or helplines for men? Not a one.
2) It wildly exaggerates the importance of Hembling to the MRM – especially ironic given that Hembling has been more or less AWOL in recent months, producing only a few short videos and one article for AVFM.
3) It paints a picture of The Spearhead’s WF Price as a Men’s Rights “moderate.” Really? While it’s true that Price is not an AVFM-style hothead given to rants about “fucking your shit up,” his views are anything but moderate. This is a guy who thinks higher education is wasted on women, who blames the epidemic of rape in the armed forces on women, who celebrated one Mothers Day with a vicious transphobic rant, who once used the tragic death of a woman who’d just graduated from college to argue that “after 25, women are just wasting time.” He published posts on why women’s suffrage is a bad idea. Plus, have you met his commenters?
I was, however, kind of amazed to learn that Price is married … and to a feminist. No, really.
4) The article, while solidly researched, contains some small errors and simplifications that will no doubt give MRAs and others the excuse they need to dismiss the whole thing. Kelly refers to Reddit subreddits as Reddit “threads!” He refers to Matt Forney as an MRA! Oh no!
Still, whatever its flaws, this is an important piece, and one that tells a lot of truth about the Men’s Rights movement. Again — go read it!
Posted on October 20, 2013, in a voice for men, are these guys 12 years old?, johntheother, lying liars, misogyny, MRA and tagged a voice for men, antifeminism, daily beast, men's rights, misogyny, MRA, R. Tod Kelly. Bookmark the permalink. 1,986 Comments.
Random cool booze discovery – a Tibetan version of nigori sake. If anyone’s going to be in the Bay Area I can tell you where to get it (at a place that serves great Tibetan food too, run by a very nice lady who is also a clasically trained French pastry chef).
Speaking of “Oh man,” I’m going OT from the booze discussion that I just expressed my enthusiasm for, but… does anyone have any alternatives to that interjection? I’m trying to cut weirdly-gendered phrases from my go-to vocabulary as a personal project (largely just to see if I can), but I don’t really have a good substitute for that one.
When the idiot had left, I asked the boss, “So, d’you think the fish will have any trouble keeping clear of that one?”
He didn’t.
I’ve never liked recreational fishing (or any sport involving killing animals) but since coming to work at this place, I’ve found that if a customer is rock-bottom stupid, odds are he’ll (it’s always a bloke) will be a fisherman.
All my booze experiments lately have been devoted to beer. We’ve got some pretty awesome craft brewers around here, and I am enjoying the opportunity to try out all the cool stuff they are experimenting with.
Then, of course, there is Samuel Smith’s Chocolate Stout, which is not at all local but is completely and totally delicious.
dustydeste – I use “oh gods” a lot, in which “gods” is gender neutral, but I’m not sure if that fits the bill.
(Damn it, I have to do more homework now… *grumblegrumble*)
I personally like “Oh dear,” although it doesn’t really have the same effect.
Say “Oh cat!” instead of “Oh man!” It almost rhymes and it invokes CC. :)
Cassandra – I dunno if cretintroll is new troll, old act or a sock, either. He could be lying either way, pretending he’s been here ages but giving himself away with stuff like misgendering, OR he could be doing the misgendering deliberately to get a rise (pity for him it caused laughage instead). If it was the latter, that’s rather Al-ish.
The bit about subnormal intelligence was quite Pellish, as Pecunium noted.
I’m starting to think our trolls are breeding. Or being cloned, or mass produced, or something. Where are the great original trolls of yesteryear? Where are the Spanish-Cyrillic Admiralty courts, the Illuminati, the modern hospitals where needles under the nails are advanced medicine, the dividing line down one of those rivers starting with M, the I-totes-love-my-wife-but-I-want-virtual-reality-instead?
Are they breeding with each other? That would explain why they’re starting to seem like amalgamations of eldertrolls.
That’s the impression I have. Must say the breeding program is not a success so far. The quality of the bloodline is very poor.
I think I’ve figured out the underlying theme of ahostileworld’s posts. It explains zir inconsistency, affinity for subjective analysis of phenomena that affect a large number of people and incoherence pretty well, I think.
Shorter ahostileworld: ”Nothing exists. Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it. Even if something could be known about it, knowledge about it can’t be communicated to others.”
Re: troll breeding program: I’m more inclined to utter Herbert West’s famous phrase: “Damn it, it wasn’t quite fresh enough!”
Also, yay booze! My favorite subject! I love winemaking. I’m presently enjoying a newly finished order of homemade apple wine, made with a batch of recently plucked apples (and not much else). Refreshing, slightly sparkly; I think I did well with this one. I’m thinking of trying out some form of red wine next, but I’ve made it before and I screwed it up, so I’m not sure. Still, new stuff is always fun to try. Making my own vodka sounds cool, but it requires tools that I do not (yet) possess.
For some reason, I can’t stand beer, though.
I think beer smells like fermented urine. Not a fan.
Argenti: Just woke up. and I have to head to work. Hope to be home this early afternoon for a bit.
I think trolls have an upper limit on creativity. If they actually think about the talking points they regurgitate it would create a worldview cognitive dissonance so powerful their heads would be blown right off, so they can’t think. As a thought forms they push it away, just repeating what they’ve heard before.
This obviously doesn’t apply to masters of cognitive dissonance like the trolls of yore, so their arguments get repeated. They’re long and complicated, and that’ll have to do as a substitute for any semblance of logic…
pecunium — yeah, that’s fine. I’m at the shop and made it to VtM end game, so I’m okay at present. Thanks.
Yeah, pretty sure this was my fail… I mean, it was 1:30am! I was tired and full of derp.
Nah, I’d guess it’s probably just a cheap and ultimately useless attempt at scaring us.
“They’re watching us! They’re watching us!! AAAAAAAAAHHH!!!”
Heh.
“Zwounds!” or “KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN (Khaaaaaan)”
For the record, I don’t think many of them are actually trolls in the sense that they’re playing a character in order to annoy people. I’m perfectly willing to believe that they believe what they say, and that they’re actually trying to convince us that we’re wrong. It’s just that they have no idea how to use logic or a skeptical approach to reality. The fact that so many of them feel the need to mention that they’re atheists (and then assume that we’re all religious) is quite telling of this, because it’s utterly irrelevant. I could understand mentioning that they’re skeptics, because a good skeptic will check the evidence before taking a view, but atheism is just a single conclusion which can be reached with or without skepticism.
So, yeah, not trolls, just irrational with a high opinion of their own intelligence and no understanding of how to communicate… much like fundamentalists. :P
Cassandra: Corralejo makes a very good anejo tequila. One plus in the TX column is they do have quite the selection if tequila is your thing.
Dustydeste — My full nym is, in proper Latin, Argenti Aetheri — I typoed the r and liked it so I left it. Silver aether // mist — closest I could get to silver lining without it getting weird. And pecunium should be pecunia, it’s a feminine noun, so really, we both have nearly Latin nyms.
But another Latin fan!
Kitteh — guilty confession, I used to catch and release. I was a kid, and it was about the only tolerable thing to do with my father, but I feel so bad for those fishies now.
@Athywren: No harm, no foul. I have a history of writing ambiguous posts that people take the exact opposite way of how I meant them to be taken. So, the common factor in all these situations has, in fact, been me, and my drunk brian nto ytping porperly.
Also, I make stupid mistakes with my English. A dumb typo while attempting to type “zombie plague” once inspired me to write a short, educational story about people turning into zombies for not taking care of their teeth properly.
I Extrapolate: Grind-core
Perpetrator’s Perception: Death metal
Be Specific: Minimalist nerd-core
The World is Not Disneyland: Indie-pop
36 Years Old, Grey Hair, Wheelchair-Bound, on the Larger Side: The new album from “The World is Not Disneyland”
Re 5 percent of men do not consider their rapes to be rape equals rape culture
A considerable amount of effort has now been invested in attempts at addressing my point that this translates into just over 2 percent of the overall population. It stands to reason that some people will be deranged enough to not see their own crime for what they are, especially when one takes into account the prevalence of sociopathy in western society (3 to 30 percent).
The mental gymnastics undertaken to inflate a figure of just over 2 percent in order to make the assertion, that there is a ‘rape culture’, more plausible were accompanied by some of the most disappointingly graceless spasms I have ever seen in a discussion like this.
For instance, there was this ‘argument’ that, if 1 in 20 of all the men is clueless about the criminality of his crime, then there will likely be a sizable amount of non-rapists who also do not know that rape is rape. Ell oh ell to that. This is just another example of an attempt at smuggling higher numbers into a stat that does not in and of itself look impressive enough to fulfil its ideological/propagandistic purpose. This, I believe, is what is meant by ‘cooking the books’ in the English language.
Then, other commenters served up another harangue of alarmism and non-sequiturs, in which they made vague anecdotal references to journalists speaking of ‘ “rape” rape ‘ and the various journalistic buffooneries surrounding the Steubenville rape, in which commentators lamented that the rapists would not be able to pursue a sports career anymore, etc…
And? 1 in 20 men don’t know they are rapists plus most journalists are idiots equals rape culture?
Ok…, if you say so…
Prevalence of Sociopathy: Thrash
Disappointingly Graceless Spasms: Goth
Propagandistic Purpose: R.A.C.
Harangue of Alarmism: Crust punk
Various Journalistic Buffooneries: A Jello Biafra side project
Shut up, ahostileworld. Go fuck back off to wherever you came from.
?
What do you think effort means?
See, surely no troll would make such a stupid misrepresentation? Considering that your argument was that if 1 in 20 of all men was “clueless” then the other 19 were fully aware, it seems like the skeptical approach is to point out that data on 1 in 20 refers to that 1 in 20, and tells us little about the other 19. What it tells us that the other 19 didn’t admit to committing rape when the word rape was left out, not that every single one of them was aware.
Please, learn how logic works.
@ahostileworld
-10/10 please never argue again
You appear to be unfamiliar with the survey.
FFS… Are you truly this obtuse or are you just really, really good at pretending to be?
Other, smarter, less drunk people will most likely be here in a moment to tear your pointless drivel into shreds, but first, just for fun, let’s turn things the other way: If the Steubenville rape had been an isolated incident, if the rapists were universally reviled for their deed, if the rest of the world would gasp in horror at this mockery of justice, if the victim had been offered support instead of being blamed for being the victim of a horrible crime, and so forth… Then no, there would indeed be no such thing as rape culture. Alas, this is not the case. All these things and more happening when the crime is rape instead of any other crime makes a pretty good case for the argument for the existence rape culture. Why is this so hard to understand?
Also, again with the sociopathy. As in bad things in society being done exclusively by inherently bad people, isolated cases (instead of largely privileged assholes with entitlement issues)? The mantra of all right-wing crackpots out there? Good grief.
Your argument is bad and you should feel bad.
‘A mockery of justice’?
The two rapists are serving time in juvenile detention and have been added to the sex offenders register. This is exactly what should happen to all rapists (the young ones anyway, the old ones belong in prison)
Oh that’s just precious, it thinks we don’t know the survey. You know, the one where, when asked if they’d “had sex” under conditions that were legally rape one in 20 men said yes. Says fuck all about the remaining 19 men’s understanding of whether or not that was rape, just that they either honestly were not rapists (likely for most of them) or did not answer honestly (this is called “margin of error” and if anyone could be so kind as to link to the survey, I will do a more mathematically sound smack down)
Not being a rapist =/= knowing what rape is in a legal sense. Just means you haven’t committed rape.
Aren’t you supposedly a math whiz kid?
You just described rape culture, dipshit. People not even knowing what rape is is kind of a problem with our culture don’t you think?
And quite frankly, that’s an extremely charitable interpretation (to the point of magical Disneyland thinking). There’s a lot of evidence to support the theory that most of those men damn well KNOW that what they are doing is wrong or at the very least, not cool, even if they are unwilling to call it rape. I believe this would satisfy your #2 requirement for “proof” of a rape culture, no?
Argenti Aertheri, one should only draw the conclusions that the source material definitively point to. Everything else is conjecture. Unless and until the numbers prove otherwise, the other 19 men are innocent in my books. Innocent until proven guilty. No waffling on about ‘margins of error’ will change that. The rule of law and justice for everyone all the way!
The margin of error is moot to whether the other 19 understand that the question was asking about rape.
Jesus mother-fucking shit. I can’t even make band names out of that garbage. How can a human being this stupid know how to use a computer?
Also, they are all innocent until proven guilty. THat’s a legal concept, socially we can judge them all we like. And the margin of error is a statistical concept and thus entirely relevant to how many men, according to the study and the statistics it used, are rapists.
Easy. I’m using a tablet.
“No waffling on” — something acoustic?
So was I for all comments before the ones today. That has no bearing on your logical failures.
Aww, look, he did that thing where he doesn’t respond hard questions and comments! He’s like a little Thunderf00t!
Socially, we suspect 6, 7, 8, 20 out of 20 men of being rapists.
Yeah.
Well, this is why the ‘rape culture’ cannard is nothing but a very badly thought-through fearmongering campaign. No wonder nobody outside the small cosmos of internet comment sections drinks the kool aid.
Wasn’t the question in that study something along the lines of “Have you ever had sex with someone who did not give, or was unable to give, consent?”
Unless there was also a “Have you ever raped anyone?” question, this doesn’t really tell us whether or not the respondents knew that their actions were rape. It seems to me that some folks tend have an “if they knew it was rape, they wouldn’t have admitted to it” bias when interpreting the results.
Okay, here you go, hostile. I’ll even use small words so that you can follow along without getting lost. You’ll find all of this in the
The overwhelming number of rapes are committed by a small number of rapists who know exactly what they are doing. IIRC, the average is five to six before someone gets ‘caught’ officially and enters the justice system, though evidence suggests that many of these budding predators are caught and released with a slap on the wrist or a ‘boys will be boys’ kind of head shaking. The evidence and stats for this will be familiar to you, as it was a part of the reading you (supposedly) did when you followed the links given to you here.
Your argument about this seems to boil down to the fact that, as your nym suggests, it’s just a terrible world out there filled with terrible people and what can you do? You use the incidence of murder and theft (and in other cases, petty theft and jaywalking, I seem to recall) as a comparative example of perfectly common intrapersonal awfulness, and suggest that rape is so perfectly understood and commonly accepted (as an objectively bad and horrible thing, like hurricanes or typhoons, seems to be your suggestion) that nothing resembling “rape culture” can be said to exist.
This is, in fact, demonstrable proof that you have accepted the core beliefs of rape culture, and are happy enough to continue to spread it. Rape culture is the name given to the set of beliefs and assumptions that cause rape to be dealt with differently than other crimes.
The idea that rape is just a force of nature, something we human beings can’t do anything about is a major factor in rape culture (societies that criminalize rape and prosecute those who commit rape tend to experience a significant reduction in the incidence of those crimes, and even as recently as last year awareness campaigns and crackdowns on the behavior have achieved a decrease in the incidence of rape).
The idea that rape is the inevitable result of the victim having been in the wrong place at the wrong time, or wearing the wrong clothing, or being the wrong type of person is a major component of rape culture as it shifts the focus away from the person who chose to commit the crime to the person who was subjected to the crime (name one other crime where this happens, where criminal activity can be and is excused based on the behavior of the victim?)
The idea that rape is ambiguous and more often than not the result of misunderstanding or miscommunication is a major component of rape culture (studies repeatedly show that those who have committed rape know what consent is, they just don’t care to work or wait for it).
The idea that the feelings and experiences of the perpetrator are more important than the feelings and experiences of the victim is a major component of rape culture, and it both stems from and feeds into the above points.
There are plenty more, but these are a few of the biggest in the set of behaviors and assumptions that make up rape culture. One of the reasons your commentary here lacks credibility is that you handwave and dance around facts like this instead of addressing them head on (or admitting that you can’t do so).
Does western society privilege certain sociopathic behaviors at certain times? Sure, this is one where I’ll agree with you. But just because an idea has social currency now does not mean that it is a natural product of history or biology or any other factor of our physiological or psychological life, or that it always will be prevalent. Not too long ago it was widely believed that illness was the result of malevolent invisible beings, and that it was perfectly acceptable and reasonable to own another human being. Society evolved beyond such disease of thought, helped by activism and campaigns to raise awareness.
The more apt analogy here might be to institutionalized racism rather than to other crimes directly. Prior to the civil rights era, there were a set of behaviors, assumptions and attitudes that supported the project of treating one set of human beings as animals and property, and we called this racism. Among the components of racism is the idea that racial difference is just fact of nature, that some people were less than human based on the amount of pigment in their skin. Among the components of racism is the idea that some people deserve to be treated like animals or property based on where they were born or who they were born to. Among the components of racism is the idea that the feelings and preferences and experiences of one group of people are more real and more important than those of another, based on their skin color or body shape or history or ancestry.
The behaviors and assumptions understood via the shorthand term racism, like the behaviors and assumptions understood via the shorthand term rape culture, caused definitive, measurable harm that can be seen, understood and counteracted, even though it isn’t possible to take samples to test the measurable level of racism in the air or water. Racism, like rape culture, is no less real for all that it is a social force rather than a physical or geological or chemical, etc. one.
But of course, you don’t have the integrity to address any of this directly. You’ve already demonstrated the fact that you will slither away to a new topic whenever you are pressed on one point or another. You won’t ignore it, because that’s not your style. You’ll handwave, and deflect, and find some peripheral or semantic issue to nitpick over.
Because, at core, you are a sad little coward, like every other troll that comes here looking to wave their misogyny on the other side of a computer screen.
Oh, hayle! Sorry for the wall-o-text, folks. I typed that up so quickly that it didn’t seem as big as that until the screen refreshed after I hit “post”!
For all his chest pounding over his supposed having a superior STEM degree (which I don’t believe he’s divulged, despite proclaiming to know all of our degrees), fucker damn well could have done with a few well placed writing and/or composition courses.
Scientific/mathematic brilliance is great and all, but counts for zilch if you can’t communicate your ideas well.
Course, no amount of good communication will make shit ideas good, but at least he’d be easier to understand. Waffling? Projection, projection, projection. Fucker’s done nothing but project and deflect and meander all around.
Yes, exactly.
Uh…. huh…
…
……….
……
Performance art?
First, these are the questions —
1. Have you ever been in a situation where you tried, but for various reasons did not succeed, in having sexual intercourse with an adult by using or threatening to use physical force (twisting their arm, holding them down, etc.) if they did not cooperate?
2. Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone, even though they did no want
to, because they were too intoxicated (on alcohol or drugs) to resist your sexual
advances (e.g., removing their clothes)?
3. Have you ever had sexual intercourse with an adult when they didn’t want to because you used or threatened to use physical force (twisting their arm; holding them down, etc.) if they didn’t cooperate?
4. Have you ever had oral sex with an adult when they didn’t want to because you used or threatened to use physical force (twisting their arm; holding them down, etc.) if they didn’t cooperate?
And 6.4% of the men surveyed said yes to at least one of these questions. But, because it was a single survey of one population group, there is no margin of error. So the number in question is exactly 6.4%.
Which still says fuck all about whether the remain 93.6% knew that the questions were asking about rape. Seeing how over 6% admitted to rape, but, presumably, would’ve lied if they realized the questions were asking about rape, it seems more than fair to say that some non-negligible percent of non-rapist men did not realize the questions were asking about rape. Would make for an interesting follow up study though.
Oh, the pdf is available in full here — http://www.wcsap.org/sites/www.wcsap.org/files/uploads/webinars/SV%20on%20Campus/Repeat%20Rape.pdf
Ugh. Did you even read about the Steubenville case? The boys went to jail AFTER the town was exposed for covering up the rape. And they got hardly any time in jail.
If everyone in the town understood how rape is terrible, then why the fuck did they cover it up and defend the rapists so much?
Also you STILL haven’t addressed Maryville, Rehtaeh Parsons, Sandusky, and the link Alice gave about a 13 year old boy being raped. Also the low reporting rates and extremely low conviction rates for rapists.
What is the difference between 3. and 4.?
And how when a female rapes a young boy, it’s often celebrated and treated as a compliment for him.
They did not got to jail, they went to juvenile detention. Part of the ruling found that they were too young for an adult penitentiary institution.
And all the other examples we gave. Seriously, there’s these blue magic words at the bottom and top of the comment section, reading “older comments”. You’re welcome to use that.
Juvie = kids jail pretty much. What’s your point?
Folks, maybe I’m remembering wrong (it’s getting entirely too exhausting to try to search through the zillions of pages of this thread only to reread yet more borked “logic”), but didn’t McGee suggest that burning down houses of enemies was ok after someone else was talking about the Maryville rape case in which a rape victim’s former house was burned down?
It follows that Asshole McGee thinks it’s ok to burn down the house of a rape victim, because the victim is the enemy of the attacker.
How the hell does he even still think he has any credibility whatsoever after that?
There was some positive news in the follow up investigations in Steubenville, btw. A school employee was indicted for obstruction of justice in trying to cover up the crime: http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/local_news/steubenville-city-schools-employee-indicted-for-obstructing-justice-in-steubenville-rape-case
I can’t stand Mike DeWine (he’s a right-wing Republican) but I’m glad he’s pursued this case.
And since everyone probably needs it right now, sleeping bulldog puppy goes oof:
http://fyeahenglishbulldogs.tumblr.com/post/64706497063
Drst, is it bad that I found it heart warming when I read that a right wing republican pursued the case? I’m just so used to hearing about them say horrible shit about rape, especially about rape cases like this. And not just republicans, some liberals say awful shit about rape too.
@ahostileworld: Should have known you would hang on to the one thing that’s legal, not cultural. You do realize “culture” and “legal stuff” are not synonyms, right? Just because the law sometimes works doesn’t mean there’s no societal pressure to make it… not work. It’s called rape culture, not rape law. There is nothing unusual about this case, nothing that makes this warrant special attention in the eyes of anyone who sees this shit on a daily basis. Nothing at all. And that’s fucked up.
The “mockery of justice” part? Yes, they got off with a year or two, which I find absolutely appalling, but it’s par for the course in the grand scheme of things. That’s all kinds of fucked up, but of course you don’t see it that way, because you are fully objective and not at all affected by societal attitudes around you, i.e. rape culture. The societal attitudes (“boys will be boys”, “you shouldn’t have got so drunk”, “you led them on”, “you were asking for it”, “those poor boys”) are there, whether you want to see them or not. They’re the problem, and that’s what third wave feminism is fighting.
Of course, you may just be one of those people who believe that equal rights before the law lead to actual equal treatment. In which case, go fuck yourself. If you think judges are unaffected by cultural narratives telling them how certain demographics should be treated, you deserve to step on Legos forever.
‘It follows that Asshole McGee thinks it’s ok to burn down the house of a rape victim, because the victim is the enemy of the attacker.’
Your grasp of logic is lacking. My comment was not in reference to that and I *still* do not know where Maryville is and why it is so important to you.
But kudos to you. It was a cute little attempt at smearing somebody as punishment for saying things you don’t like. Nicely done.
“That example you keep using seems significant and relevant to the discussion we are having, but I have no intention to find out why!”
Ugh, it’s sooooo haaarrrd!
What’s the difference between “sexual intercourse” and “oral sex”? Just how fucking daft are you?
@auggziliary – that was pretty much my reaction as well. I remember DeWine when he was in Congress because I lived in his district at the time, so I was expecting a much less supportive stand from him, but he’s the Attorney General now and he’s been thorough in dealing with the case.
ahostileworld,
Plz answer kthx.
@believinginahostileworlddoesn’tmakeittrue: But you do realize you’re in an ongoing conversation, right? You can’t pretend the things you’ve uttered before have no bearing on how your comments should be viewed later. I mean yes, obviously you can, but we can go back and read your comments, so the point is moot. Obfuscating and gaslighting don’t work when you can’t go back and edit your comments.
YOU deemed violent attacks on enemies acceptable. When people call you out on it, don’t pretend the accusations come out of the left field. If you’ve shown willingness to allow violence in one place, allowing it in a second place isn’t a competely different matter altogether, just a question of how you define “enemies”. Things are always related.
I told you about maryville earlier douchebag. I was the first one to ask if that what you were referring to, and I gave a brief explanation of what happened.
Are you aware that new page of comments =/= wiped memory?
A little ray of sunshine. Seeing those words made me grateful that at least ol’ hostiletoreading is stuck here on the intertubes misreading or ignoring words on a screen rather than misreading maps and ignoring signs while navigating for a tour bus or something.
Just caught up, but wanted to say everybody who’s contributed, and is not hostilitymagnet, you’re fabulous.
I can poke the troll, but actually addressing his ‘points’?
Nope, nope, dear ceiling cat, nope!
Also, lovely English Bulldogs, and @gillyrosebee, that google link is awesome. :)
Hey Hostile, I was just wondering: You established here that you think it’s okay to murder people for your cause. But back here, you said “animals and people are off-limits.” So what changed over that one day?
@katz
Asking for consistency is MISANDRY. I thought we established that?
Besides, assfax are subject to change without notice, doncha know. And so are philosophies determined from such.
In an unprecedented turn of events, the judge ruled that the defendants were, in fact, teenagers.
Comicfury is down right now, but the new comic is done!
@katz, I Don’t have the words. You are fabulous take a bow. :)
Hostility, care to address the survey’s actual points instead of diverting to a pointless clarification?