Rachel Jeantel, Men’s Rights scapegoat

Well, it took them a little while, but the folks at Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men have finally figured out an angle on the Trayvon Martin case. According to regular AVFM contributor August Løvenskiolds, the whole thing can be blamed on a woman — specifically, Rachel Jeantel, the friend of Trayvon Martin who was on the phone with him just before he was killed.

According to Løvenskiolds, who seems to know more about what happened that night than it is in fact possible for him to know,

During a post-trial interview with Piers Morgan on CNN, Rachel Jeantel, the reluctant phone witness who was talking to Martin just before Martin assaulted Zimmerman, finally revealed that she had warned Martin that Zimmerman might be gay, or even, a gay rapist preparing to approach Martin.

This isn’t news; Jeantel said in her testimony that she told Martin she was afraid the man following him might be a rapist. But Løvenskiolds moves quickly from “sworn testim0ny” to “making shit up.”

Martin freaked out over the idea that Zimmerman might have sexual designs on him or his family, and this seems to have precipitated the attack on Zimmerman – which, of course, would make the attack a violation of Zimmerman’s human rights as a (purportedly) gay man, and make Jeantel the proxy instigator of the attack.

Yes, that’s right, the whole thing was “violence by proxy” instigated by an evil homophobic woman.

Would you like some armchair psychoanalysis to go with your unfounded speculation?

So, Trayvon Martin was killed in the act of gay-bashing (in Jeantel’s and his own minds, anyway). The fury of Martin’s sudden turnabout attack is now explicable (he had been avoiding being followed up to the point of the introduction of the gay rapist idea) and it indicates the degree of Martin’s revulsion that he went from flight to fight mode in so short a time.

And this of course makes it all All About The Menz Rights.

The men’s human rights issues related to a woman (Jeantel) being held blameless for using gay/rape threats to precipitate man-on-man violence ought to be obvious.

It’s always a woman’s fault, isn’t it?

Elsewhere in the post, Løvenskiolds seriously suggests that when a police dispatcher told Zimmerman that “we don’t need you” to follow Martin, that was Super Seekret Man Code for “we actually DO need you to follow him.” No, really.

Such negative suggestions are as clear to savvy men as this: “Honey, you don’t need to buy me roses for Valentine’s Day” – meaning, of course, “if you know what is good for you, I’d better get flowers AND chocolate AND jewelry AND a nice dinner AND…”

The fact that the dispatcher further expected Zimmerman to meet with officers – drafting Zimmerman into the militia, as it were – made it clear to Zimmerman that his continued pursuit of Martin was expected by the police as well.

The societal expectation of militia service by all able-bodied adult males is certainly a men’s human rights issue and an indication of inequality between the genders that needs to be redressed.

MRAs may not be good at much, but they’ve got mental gymnastics down to a science.

EDIT: I added a graf after the first quote from Løvenskiolds clarifying that Jeantel says she did in fact tell Martin that she thought Zimmerman might be a rapist.