Is The Mankind Initiative’s #ViolenceIsViolence video a fraud?
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The ManKind Initiative, a UK organization devoted to fighting domestic violence against men, recently put out a video that’s been getting a lot of attention in the media and online, racking up more than six million views on YouTube in a little over a week.
The brief video, titled #ViolenceIsViolence, purports to depict the radically different reactions of bystanders to staged incidents of domestic violence between a couple in a London plaza. When the man was the aggressor, shoving the woman and grabbing her face, bystanders intervened and threatened to call the police. When the woman was the aggressor, the video shows bystanders laughing, and no one does a thing.
The video has been praised by assorted Men’s Rights Activists, naturally enough, but it has also gotten uncritical attention in some prominent media outlets as well, from Marie Claire to the Huffington Post.
There’s just one problem: The video may be a fraud, using deceptive editing to distort incidents that may well have played out quite differently in real life.
A shot-by-shot analysis of the video from beginning to end reveals that the first “incident” depicted is actually a composite of footage shot of at least two separate incidents, filmed on at least three different times of day and edited together into one narrative.
A careful viewing of the video also reveals that many of the supposed “reaction shots” in the video are not “reaction shots” at all, but shots taken in the same plaza at different times and edited in as if they are happening at the same time as the staged “incidents” depicted.
Moreover, none of the people depicted as laughing at the second incident are shown in the same frame as the fighting couple. There is no evidence that any of them were actually laughing at the woman attacking the man.
The editing tricks used in the video were brought to my attention by a reader who sent me a link to a blog entry by Miguel Lorente Acosta, a Professor of Legal Medicine at the University of Granada in Spain, and a Government Delegate for Gender Violence in Spain’s Ministry of Equality. He goes through the video shot by shot, showing each trick for what it is.
The post in Spanish, and his argument is a little hard to follow through the filter of Google Translate, so I will offer my own analysis of the video below, drawing heavily on his post. (His post is still worth reading, as he covers several examples of deceptive editing I’ve left out.)
I urge you to watch the video above through once, then follow me through the following analysis.
The first “incident” is made up of footage taken at three distinct times, if not more. The proof is in the bench.
In the opening shot of the video, we see an overview of the plaza. We see two people sitting on a bench, a man in black to the left and a woman in white to the right, with a trash can to the right of them. (All of these lefts and rights are relative to us, the viewers.) The trash can has an empty green bag hanging off of it.
As the first incident begins, we see the same bench, only now we see two women sitting where the man was previously sitting. The trash can now has a full bag of trash sitting next to it.
In this shot, showing bystanders intervening in what is portrayed as the same fight, and supposedly depicting a moment in time only about 30 seconds after the previous shot, we see that the two women on the bench have been replaced by two men, one in a suit and the other in a red hoodie. The full trash bag has been removed, and the trash can again has an empty trash bag hanging off of it.
Clearly this portion of the video does not depict a single incident.
What about the reaction shots? The easiest way to tell that the reaction shots in the video did not chronologically follow the shots that they come after in the video is by looking at the shadows. Some of the video was shot when the sky was cloudy and shadows were indistinct. Other shots were taken in direct sunlight. In the video, shots in cloudy weather are followed immediately by shots in roughly the same location where we see bright sunlight and clear shadows.
Here’s one shot, 9 seconds in. Notice the lack of clear shadows; the shadow of the sitting woman is little more than a vague smudge.
Here’s another shot from less than a second later in the same video – the timestamp is still at 9 seconds in. Now the plaza is in direct sunlight and the shadows are sharp and distinct.
If you watch the video carefully, you can see these sorts of discontinuities throughout. It seems highly unlikely that the various reaction shots actually depict reactions to what they appear to be reactions to. Which wouldn’t matter if this were a feature film; that’s standard practice. But this purports to be a depiction of real incidents caught on hidden camera and presented as they happened in real time.
The issue of non-reaction reaction shots is especially important when it comes to the second incident. In the first incident, we see a number of women, and one man, intervening to stop the violence. There is no question that’s what’s going on, because we see them in the same frame as the couple.
In the second incident, none of the supposed laughing onlookers ever appear in the same frame as the fighting couple. We have no proof that their laughter is in fact a reaction to the woman attacking the man. And given the dishonest way that the video is edited overall, I have little faith that they are real reaction shots.
The people who are in frame with the fighting couple are either trying resolutely to ignore the incident – as many of the onlookers also did in the first incident – or are clearly troubled by it.
I noticed one blonde woman who looked at first glance like she might have been laughing, but after pausing the video it became clear that she was actually alarmed and trying to move out of the way.
There is one other thing to note about the two incidents. In the first case, the onlookers didn’t intervene until after the man escalated his aggression by grabbing the woman by her face. In the second video, the screen fades to black shortly after the woman escalates her aggression to a similar level. We don’t know what, if anything, happened after that.
Is it possible that the first part of the video, despite being a composite of several incidents, depicts more or less accurately what happened each time the video makers tried this experiment? Yes. Is it possible that onlookers did indeed laugh as the woman attacked the man? Yes.
But there is only one way for The ManKind Initiative to come clean and clear up any suspicion: they need to post the unedited, time-stamped footage of each of the incidents they filmed from each of their three cameras so we can see how each incident really played out in real time and which, if any, of the alleged reactions were actual reactions.
In addition to the editing tricks mentioned above, we don’t know if the video makers edited out portions of the staged attacks that might have influenced how the bystanders reacted.
The video makers should also post the footage of the incidents that they did not use for the advert, so we can see if reactions to the violence were consistently different when the genders of attackers and victims were switched. Two incidents make up a rather small sample – even if one of these incidents is actually two incidents disguised as one.
Domestic violence against men is a real and serious problem. But you can’t fight it effectively with smoke and mirrors.
Posted on May 30, 2014, in domestic violence, MRA, shit that never happened and tagged #ViolenceIsViolence, domestic violence, men's rights, MRA, The MAnkind Initiative. Bookmark the permalink. 933 Comments.
Kittehs,
::hugs:: for the noninterference guilt.
Sorry you went through that, sorry the victim went through that, and many hopes that the PoS did get arrested for his PoS-ery.
Suzy, that’s awful! So, so much wrong…
::hugs:: for you, too.
Even if it were completely real, what do they think it would change about how feminists think? Feminists already acknowledge that society’s reaction to men being abused being framed as not serious or the men being weak is fucked up, and that all abuse is something to be discouraged.
MRAs on the other hand seem to view any violence against men (cis men, anyway), regardless of the source, as a gotcha that should make violence against women more socially acceptable.
Thank you kittehserf; I should go pack now.
Even though i understand what this article tries to say about the video, its obvious that the video editors only put in relevent parts of the video without wasting screen time showing passive bystanders. I’d bet 100 $ there was not even a single person laughing at a woman being beat up by a man and that there was atleast one person laughing at a beat up man. Im pretty sure most of the people i know would laugh at a man being beaten to a pulp by a woman or maybe im just surrounded my terrible people. :(
You may call it patriarchy and MRA’s may call it misandry but to an innocent bystander like me who cares about human rights, its just painful to watch.
There was a social experiment done on this where a man was intimidating a woman at th e park and within minutes the white knights showed up and the restrained the guy. When the guy was being beaten by the woman, none of people even cared to look. Over 150 people passed by the couple and a young woman with tats said ‘you go girl’ and walked away fist pumping. It took an old lady with compassion to call 911 on the abusive woman.
Google:’Reaction To Women Abusing Men In Public’ and watch the first video that pops up. Its a bit older than this one.
This is a double standard that exists in society and noone is doing a shit about it. All we can do is hope either the feminists beat the patriarchy unicorn or the MRA’s come out of their basements to actually do anything. I still cant understand how anyone with a heart can laugh at abuse. Damn, im going for a drink to feel better again. :(
Not DV, exactly, but: last summer a guy I knew hit a girl across the face on the middle of a dance floor. No intervention (admittedly, I was outside on the phone at the time) and he quickly fled the premises in case she “told” anyone. She was going to tell his girlfriend that he had been sending flirty messages to her. As it happened, he returned to the bar the next week, got praised by a lot of the local punters for “giving her what was coming – she was a nosy bitch” and was informed by the bar staff that he could continue to drink there so long as he didn’t bring it up. There was a running gag, I think, about how he should be hired as the doorman and give troublemakers a good “elbow”
He actually twisted it to make it sounds like she had been sending him naughty messages and was jealous of his relationship – ’cause she like, you know, totally wanted the D. His girlfriend bought this, I think, and continued to defend him. He also made it sound like she had assaulted his girlfriend in a fit of passionate jealousy, and he had merely thrown her off her. His girlfriend also encouraged this story, as did some of his friends. The girl went to the bar staff to check the CCTV footage – I think they were going to ban her – and found that he had pretty much been arguing with her and smashed her across the face when he tried to go past him. He still went there, was allowed entrance and was praised by people for taking care of the “town bike”.
So not quite DV but I do think it was this that really opened my eyes towards attitudes about male violence and how it is, in fact, quite extrapolated. By contrast, when I was around a drunk woman flipping out at her boyfriend the reactions were people commenting she was a crazy bitch and how much it would suck to date her. (The bouncers quickly removed her, shrieking and kicking, and made sure the guy was OK).
Cassandrakitty
“Am I the only person whose hair actually gets better when it’s humid? Mine is fine and curly.”
Right here! Humidity is good. Unless I try to straighten it.
@Anand
“White Knights”? Fuck off.
Thank you contrapangloss!
Toolbox
Ughh terrible story. It reminds me of a personal experience.
I remember one time I witnessed one of my friends’ boyfriend hitting her in public, I stood up and defended her and he threatened to hit me with a coca-cola bottle made of glass. I had to back down. We were at a cafe. There were at least 6-7 people sitting close to us, but they didn’t react. My ‘friend’ continued to date him and was mad at me for standing up for her. “It’s none of your business”, she said.
The production of that video tells me that these people know nothing about making a hidden camera video. The mere fact that they used the same bystanders in some bits, and cut it like it was a first year film school project tells me that they either aren’t too serious about what they’re doing, they don’t give enough of a shit about what they’re doing to even try do it right, or some mix of both. I know amateur filmmakers whose production values, at least in areas of continuity, etc. who look like Peter Jackson next to the hack job these editors did. The inconsistent shadows hurt my brain!
On to boob sweat… :D
Sweat soaked bras after a good workout/rehearsal are the bane of my existence. I’ve got teeny-tiny ballet boobs that don’t actually require a sports bra, but I like looking like there’s *something* under my leotard when I’m working out. So I’ll wear a regular padded bra, because they don’t make bras in my size without padding (is that insulting on its own or what?!?), and I thus end up with a pair of soaked sponges strapped to my poor itty-bitty-titties by the time I’m done. I actually have to wring the sweat out of my bra after a good workout! It’s gross.
And now on to thigh sweat. I have to sleep in leggings all summer because I can’t stand the feeling of my sweaty things sticking together! And even though my excema isn’t nearly as bad as when I was a kid, it still likes to pop up in my sweaty knees, elbows, and inner thighs. Yeah, I fucking love summer. :P
@augzilliary im sorry if it offended you. I wasnt intending to offend people. I have no problem being a white knight. I have been the white knight for my female fruends many times just as they have been for me.
*Friends
Did you read the post right after yours?
Also, dude, men laugh at the idea of violence against women all the time.
RE: BlackSphinx
“if you say you care about domestic violence but won’t reblog this you’re a hypocrite!”
I hate that form of tumblr shit. It’s just the newest version of a chain letter, only instead of bad luck for seven years, you get to be a shitty person. *eyeroll*
RE: Toolbox
I have never, not once, seen a men’s group address victims of homosexual domestic violence.
Back when I was in Boston, they had a queer domestic violence group, but I don’t remember who or what group it was associated with, if any.
Seeing such an attack in the day, with numerous witnesses, isn’t near common. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen a situation like this ever happen.
Lucky dog. I’ve broken up two beatings in broad daylight, one with tons of witnesses, the other with so much screaming we heard it from the floor above. One was female-on-male, the other male-on-female, and in both cases, the victims were badly hurt. (And in one case, dude tried to attack ME too.) My younger sib also broke in on a caretaker slapping the disabled elderly person they were caring for, ALSO in broad daylight with tons of witnesses who didn’t seem to notice. All of this happened within the past three years.
One of the things we try and do is break the bystander effect. We try to get loud and get involved now, because once somebody breaks the veil, people are way more active and involved. In the male-on-female beating (which was the one in a fucking public space and had him beating her unconscious) I was the one who got physically involved, but a bunch of bystanders who saw it from their apartment balcony called the police, and a few other bystanders called the cops too. The female-on-male was inside their apartment, but once I charged down, my roommates got involved too. With the elderly abuse, my younger sib grabbed a bystander who (coincidentally) turned out to be in some standing with disabled rights activism, so she knew what to do.
It only takes one person to break that effect. We try to be that person.
Also, my writeathon is OPEN! Come join the fun and get a break from trolls and horribleness!
Emilygoddess, I personally have never seen this in real life so il take that story with a pinch of salt. But i do agree that there may be some shitheads out there who do this, thing is that they are’nt ‘men’.
LBT, Totally agree.
Can the term ‘white knight’ just go crawl into a trench and die?
Another thing: we’re discussing problematic attitudes towards female-on-male violence; what about the videos of women being punched that go viral and the Internet does cartwheels at said women getting what they ‘deserve’? Why do these guys constantly act like female victims have a swimming time with the law and other people?
There’s plenty of people out there who seem to firmly believe that a nagging woman needs a slap or two to sort her out.
*other peoples’ attitudes/perceptions
You’re absolutely right! So if the laughing people were actually there during the second scene, they’re probably laughing because “haha, this whole thing is just a performance, and I totally fell for it the first time!”
Toolbox, I’ll try not to use that term again in future.
I’ve seen 3 videos of men hitting women on youtube. In all three, the first to hit was the woman. Also, In two of the videos it was mentioned that the man was arrested afterwards.
On weather and hair — mine is long, fine, and impossible to deal with. Dry weather? Today’s hair forecast calls for frizz and static! Humid? Gets wavy and, more importantly, doesn’t decide to go all POOF!
The bystander definitely doesn’t only negatively effect men. Remember last year when Nigella Lawson’s husband choked her in public and the only thing anybody did was take pictures?
The act of violence that got the term coined was the murder of Kitty Genovese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese
The attitude that you are only a real man if you act a certain way is a major part of the problem. Please don’t put the word men in quotes.
Guys, Anand has seen three YouTube videos. Obviously he’s right.
I think another thing to consider, at least, is that we have no idea how many times they actually filmed this. As David’s commentary notes, there’s a lot of lighting and positioning changes. For all we know they might have shot it several times and then selected the “best bits”. Looking at the mixture of the shots they used, this probably did take quite a while – and they’re using actors, actors make mistakes and break character. It’s very rare to get a ‘perfect’ first take.
If people saw the same thing a few times, word probably got around that it was just a performance etc.
There’s a show called Just for Laughs Gags, where they set up pranks and film them over and over again with different people getting sucked in, so people can laugh at their reactions. It shows the same gag, with different people, and then it shows the actors pointing out the hidden cameras and the peoples’ reactions. And, I assume, they get the people to sign a release to put them in the show. http://www.justforlaughs.com
So, if you really want to make a point that people ALWAYS react this way, you can easily do it. This commercial doesn’t. It’s ham-handed, and undermines its own message.
And it could be a GOOD message, that feminists everywhere would support, if only they hadn’t had to be all “women suck! men are so hard done by!” about it.
(To be honest, I hate pranks, but I don’t always have control of the remote.)
@weirwoodtreehugger:
Actually, the story of Kitty Genovese’s murder is a little more complicated than it appears, according to this article:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2014/03/10/140310crbo_books_lemann?currentPage=all
Was it The Network/La Red? They have fliers up in our animal shelter, informing people that they have pet-friendly safe houses (an unfortunate number of people stay in abusive situations out of fear for their pets’ safety; others have to give up a beloved pet when they do get out). I’ve been thinking of volunteering with them as a temporary safe house, but we don’t have a lot of room and there’s a large-ish man living here.
Yes, this *fistbump*
If your worldview is limited to things you have personally experienced, it must be very narrow indeed.
Then what are they?
Cloudiah, obviously i havent seen every video of abusive men on the internet but i have seen a lot of abuse videos on the internet and not just youtube(dont ask me why :P), i thought I’d share my experience with youtube videos. Also, there are much more videos of women abusing men(intended to be humour but looks painful) and kicking them in the balls(somewhat comparable to childbirth pain and potentially fatal leading to death or infertility) than men abusing woman which gets flagged very often for violence whereas the former is much less likely to be flagged(on youtube and other popular sites) . Its still only a personal observation but one that shocks me and at the same time makes me sad. :(
I haven’t read all the comments so sorry if someone’s already posted about this but…
Isnt’ the girl sitting by the fence in the first scene, at about 0:32 (blonde, glasses, white blouse and jeans) the same one as in the second scene, at around 1:10 and later? You can only see her briefly in the first scene and longer in the second one, but I think it’s the same person.
So if she’s really just a bystander she must be thinking, “Geez, not those arguing fuckers again. These two are sure worth one another”.
@anand
anyone else amused/ annoyed that anand takes other people’s ancedotes with a grain of salt, but expects us to listen to his?
Emilygoddess, they’re still immature teenage boys in overgrown bodies, Atleast that’s what i believe.
Also, i dont automatically believe everything that people write on the internet. So id like to keep my worldview limited to science and my experiences. :)
Marie, you are welcome to not take my experiences seriously. I never share my experiences assuming everyone will agree with me. I just brought a new perspective to the table. You are free to say that your experiences have been different. I’ll respect that. Cheers.
The vast majority of videos I’ve seen of men getting hit in the testicles have been posted by other men. For humor. See every episode of American’s Funniest Home Videos.
Women kick men in the balls for fun? wwiofwijuwodjwofheiofeir
The pain is comparable to childbirth? sdkdfjsdhosifdzogfrduigg
Cloudiah, Agreed. I believe that more men are openly misandric towards other men than woman. But the key word is ‘openly’, i believe people regardless of gender can be misandric or misogynistic. I dont buy into the ‘women suck, men rule’ mentality that some MRAs have.
Women’s Aid also have more detailed statistics about domestic violence here:
http://www.womensaid.org.uk/core/core_picker/download.asp?id=160
It heavily underlines the fact that men are far more likely to repeat acts of domestic violence, on a more extreme level, leading to women being terrorised over long periods. This contrasts very strongly with the picture for men.
Another important aspect is that women on the receiving end of domestic violence are far more likely to self-harm than women who are not in abusive relationships. One third of the women seeking emergency medical treatment for their self harm were domestic violence survivors; women in abusive relationships are five times more likely to attempt to commit suicide than women who are not abused.
“I remember when I was a kid and my father used to beat us, my mom called the cops, they came, they saw a woman and two kids in bruises and they just said “Hey,man, don’t hit your wife”, and went away. They did nothing.”
http://images.sodahead.com/images/profiles/0/0/1/4/4/4/4/7/7/profiles_cute-hug-1265338534.jpeg#cute%20hug
“@augzilliary im sorry if it offended you. I wasnt intending to offend people. I have no problem being a white knight. I have been the white knight for my female fruends many times just as they have been for me. Toolbox, I’ll try not to use that term again in future.”
Anand
We don’t like it because MRA’s use that term to describe men who try to help women out of dangerous situations to get something in return; kinda like another term for Nice Guy. You are definitely not a white knight you are a really good friend.
It’s funny to me that MRA’s are always complaining about misandry however they use terms like manginia, white knight and other words to call a man who actually treats women as decent human beings, let themselves get beaten or raped by one and use ‘science’ to justify rape and any form of abuse. No one is better at Misandry than they are.
Yeah, I know there’s a lot of misconceptions surrounding that story. I just thought it was worth pointing out that it was a murder of a woman that kicked off the term in the first place.
Suzy, the pain actually depends directly on the force and damage done. It lasts for a very short time compared to childbirth(assuming no permenant damage) and its frickin painful. Ive read a few articles suggesting that the pain is comparable. (they were scientific articles not MRA articles).
Most women dont kick men in the balls for fun. I already know that. -_- but its more likely to be taken as humour that violence by onlookers. :(
Anand
Yeah many people find terrible situations funny. It could be violent videos, rape ‘jokes’, etc.
Fruitloopsie, Agreed. I didnt know that the white knight was related the the nice guy syndrome. Personally, ive never understood the whole thing. If i was friends with a gal for whom i have unrequited feelings for, id cut all ties and leave the situation instead of waiting around for an opportunity to score and bitchin about it online. That’s borderline creepy. But thanks for pointing it out.
For someone who claims not to be an MRA you sure use talk like one.
Your use of the term white knight is classic MRA.
Your assumption that misandry is even a thing is also an MRA thing. If an individual woman hates a man it doesn’t have any effect on society as a whole because we don’t live in a culture with systemic misandry.
We do live in a culture that has misogyny built into it. When a man hates a woman he is doing so as a member of the privileged, powerful group. He is participating in systemic oppression. That’s the difference.
That’s why the position that all genders are equally hateful and there is an equivalence is complete bullshit.
Are these videos also fakes? :)
I know some who do but only with men who consent to it. Do not underestimate how strange people can be.
As for the childbirth thing, just no. Being kicked in the balls may reach the same level of pain (or possibly exceed it) but it’s brief compared to the hours that are typically involved in childbirth. That means you really can’t compare the two kinds of pain, much like you can’t really compare the level of pain from trauma like a broken bone to chronic pain.
<blockquote. I just brought a new perspective to the table.
Nothing you’ve said has been new.
Anand,
Could you please not compare childbirth to being kicked in the balls? The fact that childbirth lasts several hours and kick is over quickly is not something to be brushed off.
Childbirth can also fatal, even with modern medicine. It also changes the body forever.
You could have just said being kicked in the balls is very painful and left it at that.
I’ve never given birth but if any Mammotheers who have want to detail their experiences, it might be a good troll deterrent.
Thank you weirwoodtreehugger. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck its a duck. I have no time for benefit of the doubt stuff here. I know it isn’t designated a ‘safe space’ but anyone else talking about white knights and misandry and that poor menz get kicked in the nuts which is basically the same as childbirth actually…
I duuno. I just can’t be arsed y’know?
Only when it doesn’t refer to this fellow.
Am I the only person in the world who is bothered by the word “bitching”? It comes from the stereotype that all ‘bitches’ (women) do is nag and complain and it is therefore used as a substitute for words like ‘complain’.
Am I wrong? ‘Cause it really sounds offensive to me.
@Suzy
I think lots of people here are bothered by it. Did the troll use it, or one of the regulars?
Sorry I haven’t been paying much attention, what with anand being as boring as fuck and all.
Also, I don’t remember a period of history where the main cause of death for men was ‘kicked in the balls’
Also, what the f does ball kicking have to do with anything? It’s what this whole article is about! Men trying to take away the voices and experiences of women.
anand
no, they are men. you can’t just discount someone from a group b/c they do something you don’t like. Men hurt women, men are sexist. if you try to act like people who do these things aren’t men, you’re just trying to absolve the group of blame.
tl;dr fuck that ‘real men’ shit.
jeezus, i am just not buying your ‘blah blah youtube videoes’ shit. I mean, maybe you’ve seen a weird selection of youtube videos. but you’re really going to have to offer some sort of proof if you want everyone to believe what you say which is completely contrary to *all* of our experiences.
ffs, misandry is not real Men enforcing toxic masculinity is not misandry. It’s shitty, but it’s still rooted in sexism. What is even your point here? you’re just posting a bunch of nonsense and then acting like ‘well i was only bringing another perspective to the table’. we’ve ALL heard that perspective. everybody’s heard the ‘pretending like DV against women isn’t serious now lets talk about the men and the only way to talk about them is by pretending they have it worse’ thing that you’re doing.
Not at all.
Marie, yes, somebody just used it:
Anand | May 31, 2014 at 11:38 am
Fruitloopsie, Agreed. I didnt know that the white knight was related the the nice guy syndrome. Personally, ive never understood the whole thing. If i was friends with a gal for whom i have unrequited feelings for, id cut all ties and leave the situation instead of waiting around for an opportunity to score and bitchin about it online. That’s borderline creepy. But thanks for pointing it out.
Weirwoodtreehugger,
im sorry you feel that way but as i have already said, im neither a feminist nor an MRA. So there area lot of areas where we disagree with each other. I was not aware of the negative connotations associated with the term ‘white knight’ and i plead ignorance on my part but i do believe in the existence of misandry though.
Lets just agree to disagree and move on. :)
I always worry using the terms ‘men’ and ‘women’ here. Do they need stars? I know sex/gender isn’t binary like that but find I don’t know how to word it correctly.
That probably made no sense.
@Suzy
ah. K. I guess I just glazed over it cuz it was anand, and he’s already a boring troll.
Not that there’s anything wrong with pointing it out. I’m just blabbery and inattentative atm.
@daintydougal
I…really don’t think they need stars. If you’re talking about everyone you could just say men, women, and nonbinary people I think.
But I’m a cis woman so I might be wrong :/
Feminist isn’t comparable to MRA. My goodness. If I see one more person claim that being concerned about violence against women is ‘political point scoring’ or an ‘agenda’ the screams will be heard from miles around.
Off topic: Isn’t there a fetish for kicking men in the balls? I once ran into a YouTube channel where it was only videos of a woman in heels crushing food items, and many were ball-like. Like a pair of truffles.
Thanks Marie, I just worry tons. It’s really easy for things to come across wrong, especially online. Boop. Hopefully someone will correct me if I get it wrong and I wont have a melt down!
anand, no
here’s your first comment, with some boring stuff cut out of the midle.
“it’s obvious the video editors only put in the relevant parts of the video” No one knows that BECAUSE they edited it and chopped it. They were trying to use it to make a point, but if it jumps around and not all of it’s there, you can’t really know whether its true or not
“i bet $100 there was not a single person laughing at a women being beat up by a man”. I wish i lived in your universe. Fucking assholes laugh at women getting beat up all the time. i’ve seen “man the bitch deserved it” or whatever in relation of domestic violence. So maybe I can have those hundred dollars now, hmm?
“most people would laugh at a man being beaten to a pulp by a woman or maybe i’m just surrounded by terrible people” maybe you are. it’s probably due to your boring, what-about-teh-menz personality. I recommend both a friend and a personality transplant.
“There is a double standard that exists in society and
no ones doing a shit about itI am not doing anything. me. i’d rather post on feminists sites and derail with my what about teh menz and defensiveness of fake videos than do antyhing. me in particular.”ftfy
“Feminsts beat the patriachy unicorn” so i take it you don’t think it’s real? Must be affected so little by it that all you can see is the minimal harm the patriarchy causes men, and not the massive harm it causes women. There’ s a quote I remember from somewhere “The patriarchy is like a gun that men wield. And sometimes it backfires and it hurts. But not as much as getting hit by the bullet”.
tl;dr stop shooting us and maybe you’ll stop feeling that backfire.
sorry you are just being so obtuse, so refusing to quantify what you mean, i’m guessing because if you came out an said it, people would see exactly how shit it is. So you hide behind like “oh well maybe this is true” blah blah “i’ve seen youtube vidoes” blah bla “It’s all bad but i still want to focus on men and act like they have it *worse* than women” “blah blah patriarchy doesn’t exist.”
it’s just your language is making me very uncomfortable because it seems to me like you want to be able to say horrible shit, but without saying it directly so people can’t exactly put their finger on why it’s horrible.
anyway, i guess that was a point to say that, anand, your first comment in this thread has been nothing but obfusciating and trying to twist the facts, and you’ve kept going each subsequent comment you’ve posted. So no we can’t ‘agree to disagree’.
We did have a discussion a few months ago about whether to use an asterisk after trans — Ally said she doesn’t use one, and had a whole background on its use or non-use that was, as usual, coherent and educational, and I can’t remember it at all. My brain is swiss cheese.
Yes. Yes, there is. Alongside cuckolding and ‘a dystopian future where men are only used for breeding’, it’s a pretty good indicator that some of the MRAs and trolls confuse the real world with fetish porn.
Lets not. We’re not friends. Using a smiley face doesn’t make you look like any less of an asshole.
The purpose of this site is mocking misogyny. Why every single troll needs that pointed out when it is written as clear as day on the front page is beyond me.
If you make the claim that misandry is a systemic problem in our culture that is equivalent to misogyny you are effectively siding with the MRAs whether you admit to being one or not. That is not an attitude that we take kindly to here. I feel no particular need to be nice to people that wish to erase any form of oppression and nobody else around here does either.
If you’re looking to get hugs and cookies simply for claiming not to be an MRA (all the while using all the anti-feminist talking points) you have come to the wrong place.
So I looked at it again and something I did notice this time was that when the woman grabs the man…people don’t react at all. There’s a guy sitting eating his lunch, this is going off right beside him; and he’s not even flinching. Actors?
Also, the reaction shots: the eye lines are a mess. We have no connection for what the people are actually looking at. No sense of distance, time etc. I could easy go out and make a advert about how women find pianos falling on men hysterical using this type of videomaking.
I’ve never thought of the word ‘bitchin’. I guess it just naturally came out because ive heard a lot of women and men use it in real life. I think I’ll be careful about using it next time. Thanks for pointing it out.
I specifically said that pain of childbirth lasts much longer(assuming no permenant damage to testicles). I just wanted to give a general idea of the pain the results from being kicked in the balls. Its an analogy for the intensity of the pain and nothing else(not duration).
If you dont like me here then you can ask david to ban me. Im not a troll mainly because im not hiding behind a handle nor is it the first time im here. Im a regular reader here because i like to read. I also read avfm, jb, jezebel and many others. Im a fan of david because his views help me question my own views and outlook on sexism. Im not sure why feminists think im an MRA and MRAs think im a feminist. Im just a common guy who reads up on many topics including feminism. I genuinely hope that we can be friends or atleast not throw insults at each other. A good day to all fellow readers.
@anand
Yeah thats not gonna happen.
You read Avfm? This is why people think you’re an ass. Duh. That website is full of misogyny and skewed and false statistics.