Category Archives: oppressed men
Australian “Male Studies” initiative under fire because of its connections to raving misogynists; raving misogynists blame feminists
Antifeminist attorney, A Voice for Men contributor, and would-be Male Studies lecturer Roy Den Hollander bustin’ a move on the Colbert Report.
NOTE: See the end of the piece for an important clarification from the University.
So it seems the new “Male Studies” initiative at the University of South Australia is running into a few problems. Well, one big problem: members of the general public have discovered that some of the people involved with the initiative are raving misogynists, or have chosen to associate themselves with raving misogynists.
Yesterday, a story by journalist Tory Shepherd noted that two of the lecturers have written for a notoriously misogynistic website by the name of A Voice for Men. (You may have heard of it.) One of them, the crankish American attorney Roy Den Hollander, even suggested in a post on that site that men’s rights activists may have to take up arms against the evil Feminists who run the world.
Men Going Their Own Way blather endlessly about how women won’t shut up
Sorry, gals! You’ll never be as blabby as Men Going Their Own Way
So the nice gentlemen over on MGTOWforums are trying to get to the bottom of what they see as a very important question: Why Can’t They Ever Shut Up?
Unfortunately, they’re not asking this question about their fellow Men Going Their Own Way and their tendency to blather on and on about the manifold evils of women. No, they’re talking about women and their alleged inability to shut up. And they have some, well, interesting theories to share.
NonNegotiable offers these highly scientific thoughts:
PUA dirtbag Heartiste derides creepy Facebook stalker for being too chivalrous
Actual nice guy
Men’s Rightsers and Pickup Artists alike are obsessed with the dilemma of the so-called “Nice Guy” who can’t get laid. MRAs see his plight as a symptom of a gynocratic society in which fickle, asshole-loving women are the gatekeepers of sex; PUAs see it as a sign that beta males need to learn how to imitate the vaguely aloof swagger of the natural alpha male.
And both MRAs and PUAs completely miss the point.
To see just how badly they do, let’s take a look at a recent post from the sadly influential PUA shitbag Heartiste, who uses an alleged Facebook screencap of uncertain provenance as a springboard for a diatribe against the “desperate male,” that is, the “desperate, clingy ünterbeta male” who pursues a woman, often in a weirdly apologetic, even abject way, long after she’s made it clear she has no interest in him.
Men in Dresses: A Voice for Men stands up for trans women by declaring them to be deluded men
Men in dresses: How A Voice for Men chose to promote its post about trans women
Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men has not exactly shown much of an interest in trans* issues in the past. Indeed, the only time I can recall founder Paul Elam ever even mentioning trans* people was in the context of a vicious attack on a Men’s Studies expert who happens to be a trans woman; he suggested she was a mentally ill man-hater whose “so hated the sex they were born with that it sparked a life long academic quest to deconstruct it into something that did not disgust them.”
So it’s a little surprising to see a post on AVFM now with the seemingly dispassionate, slightly turgid, title “Male/female discrepancies in transsexualism.” The post starts out as dry as its title, but it soon becomes clear that it is “scientific” in style only. It’s not an attempt to understand trans women or trans people in general; it’s an attempt to use the existence of trans women as a helpful prop in an old Men’s Rights argument.
Men Rights Activist: Don’t expect activism from us, because “someone has to keep this society running and it damn sure ain’t going to be the ladies.”
MRA doing a large amount of advocacy in a comment section
So someone went to the Men’s Rights subreddit the other day to ask the assembled Men’s Rights Activists a simple question: what sort of activism do you folks do? Specifically, the visitor asked, “Do MRAs have marches or campaigns or fundraisers?”
The post didn’t get much attention, but the answers that “Chickenjuggle” got were pretty, well, instructive.
As the worms turn: Men’s Rights subreddit mod now defends spamming Occidental College with false rape reports
Oh, Men’s Rightsers, can you just make up your minds? Only a couple of days after blaming trolls for the spamming of Occidental College’s rape reporting site with false accusations, rather than acknowledging it as the work of Men’s Rightsers in his own subreddit who were proudly encouraging and taking credit for it themselves, Men’s Rights subreddit mod sillymod is now defending the false rape reporting as “unpopular” but thought-provoking activism.
![sillymod 6 points 7 hours ago (13|7) First you have to believe that we did something wrong in order to want to get our reputation back. Sometimes people fighting for a cause are going to do something that is unpopular in order to make a statement. I don't think we do need to get our reputation back. I think the act stands for itself, and it will get people to stop and think. permalink source save give gold hide child comments [–]TheIdesOfLight [+20] 15 points 4 hours ago (22|7) So I guess that whole "We were trolled"/"It was SRS!" bullshit is off the table? You can't pass the buck and convince yourselves everyone else is guilty but you and now it's become an act of bravery? Wow. Yeah, watching you flip flop on this for the past three days has been both alarming and rewarding. You didn't make any kind of statement, Sillymod. The entire internet and media is sneering at you and you still can't just say WE DID A TERRIBLE THING. PERHAPS WE SHOULD REFLECT ON IT AS A WHOLE. permalink source save parent give gold [–]ninioquiroz 6 points 3 hours ago (12|6) No, because that would require a level of maturity and self-awareness that this "movement" clearly lacks. But, does anybody else think feminists are to blame for all the world's problems?](http://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/sillymod2.png?w=604)
This whole exchange is worth reading — it continues on for a number of comments beyond this, with sillymod’s rationalizations becoming increasingly baroque. It’s extremely rare to see critical remarks like those from TheIdesOfLight actually get upvoted in the Men’s Rights subreddit. The Occidental College fiasco has divided the Men’s Rights subreddit like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Some are appalled by it; others are digging in their heels.
Speaking of which, here’s former subreddit mod Celda defending the false rape reports in much more straightforward terms than sillymod:
![Celda [-1] 5 points 18 hours ago (9|4) I agree that the subreddit deserves some responsibility for that. But - there was nothing wrong with those actions. I saw the news articles in which it says they were spammed with hundreds of reports, of being raped by fictional characters, accusing the staff of the Dean's Office (the form is run by the Dean's Office), etc. Those reports are non-harmful - and the goal of shutting down the online form is quite a laudable one. I am actually quite disgusted by the number of people who are defending the existence of an anonymous online form intended for reporting people as rapists.](http://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/celda.png?w=604)
Elsewhere, Celda has called the false reporting “quite moral and laudable.”
Thanks to the AgainstMensRights subreddit — which, again, is not actually against rights for men, but against the reactionary clusterfuck that is the Men’s Rights movement — for keeping close track on all this.
John “The Other” Hembling on MRAs spamming Occidental College with false rape reports: “Go forward, brothers, and f*ck their sh*t up!”
This has to be my favorite quote to come out of the whole Occidental College fiasco; it’s staggering in its moral blindness and fanaticism and its complete lack of self-awareness. It also captures well the peculiarly self-defeating quality of so much Men’s Rights rhetoric and, er, “activism.”
![johntheother [-37] -8 points 3 hours ago (11|19) "‘Men’s rights activists’ conspire to cripple college rape reporting system with false reports" GOOD! Go forward, brothers, and fuck their shit up. rape is a crime. If somebody has a report to file of being the victim of this crime - file that report with a POLICE ORGANIZATION, not with some jumped up kangaroo court or administrative star chamber. And when operating in an environment where the star-chamber rules - FTSU with the same fraudulent reports they've tuned their system to process against you. permalink source save give gold hide child comments [–]O-Fortuna 3 points 35 minutes ago (4|0) This came off so silly and juvenile I thought it was one of the troll comments the mods talked about, but you seem to be some kind of widely known mra. In favor of making false reports. Appalling.](http://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/jtoonbrothers.png?w=604)
The backstory here: the commenter in question is none other than John “The Other” Hembling, the Number Two (or Three? I can’t tell) boy at A Voice for Men. He’s responding to an article on Raw Story that’s indicative of the incredibly (and justifiably) bad press Reddit MRAs have gotten for spamming Occiental College’s anonymous rape reporting website with false reports of rape, some of which may have named real people at the school as the “perps.”
At this point in the story, even the normally obtuse Men’s Rights Redditors realize they have a disaster on their hands, and are trying to blame anyone else they can.
But Hembling thinks it’s the perfect time to cheer on the false accusers amongst the MRAs.
That’s right: apparently jealous of all the attention Reddit MRAs have gotten for their cloddish “activism,” he’s decided to jump aboard this train — after it’s left the station, derailed, and fallen into a ravine.
That response is classic, too
Men’s Rights Redditors flood Occidental College’s online rape reporting form with false accusations
Last night, a regular commenter in the Men’s Rights subreddit — inspired by a thread on 4chan — posted a link to an online form on r/mensrights under the headline “Feminists at Occidental College created an online form to anonymously report rape/sexual assault. You just fill out a form and the person is called into the office on a rape charge. The “victim” never has to prove anything or reveal their identity.”
This headline is not only inflammatory but untrue: Yes, Occidental College has an online form that allows victims of or witnesses to sexual assault to report the incidents to the school. But, as a statement at the top of the form makes clear, the point is to collect data on how much sexual violence there is at the school, who the victims are, and so on.
If the person reporting the crime names the alleged perpetrator,
a member of the Dean of Students Office will meet with that person to share that the person was named in an anonymous report, review the Sexual Misconduct Policy, and inform the person that if the allegations are true, the behavior needs to cease immediately. Information shared in this form alone will not result in anyone going through the grievance process.
I’ve put the last bit in bold to emphasize a point: No one will be charged with anything based only on information gathered using this form. As would be clear to anyone who thought about the matter for more than a few seconds, it’s rather difficult to investigate, much less prove, a rape if you don’t actually know who the victim is.
Somehow this rather elementary fact eluded the OP, and virtually all of those who left the hundreds of comments on the popular post.
Indeed, a host of Men’s Rights Redditors were so convinced of the innate evil of the online form they all had the same bright idea: let’s flood the school with false reports of rape and break the form. Here are some of their comments. (There are more in the thread.) Note the number of upvotes each of these suggestions got. (Click the images to see the comments in context on Reddit.)
While a few commenters stood up to point out that in fact the school will not charge anyone with anything as a result of anonymous information gathered by the form, they were outnumbered by Men’s Rightsers gleefully reporting that they in fact had reported false information. Among them:
![froggymorning 46 points 15 hours ago (59|13) I've already filled one out. permalink source parent save give gold hide child comments [–]Muffinizer1 6 points 7 hours ago (9|4) Was kind of fun. I swear to god though, if they track us down it would be terribly ironic, however it's mildly likely.](http://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/froggy.png?w=604)
It’s one thing to criticize an anonymous reporting system because of its potential for abuse; this is something else entirely.
The post has been up for 17 hours at this point, with more than 700 net upvotes, and some of the calls for “breaking” the form have been up for nearly as long. The moderators of Men’s Rights have done nothing to stop their subreddit being used to interfere with a school’s attempt to assist rape survivors — including men.
“Breaking” a school’s rape reporting mechanism is apparently a form of Men’s Rights activism.
Video game defenders hold the line against eeeevil women with incoherent rage, obscene phone calls
But Mega Man is supposed to be … a … man!
Welcome to the first installment of “what the hell is wrong with people, I mean really,what the hell Saturday.”
Today we’re going to look at a couple of recent controversies in the world of gaming. And by “controversies” I mean “women daring to get involved in the gaming industry and getting harassed by misogynistic assholes.”
First up, let’s look at the tale of a woman who’s now facing an angry internet mob because she drew a picture of the video game character Mega Man … as a woman.
A Voice for Men doubles down: how dishwashers, TV dinners, and marital rape laws are rendering women obsolete. Also, the apocalypse.
Not the apology that Clint Carpentier is looking for.
We met new A Voice for Men writer Clint Carpentier earlier this week, when we took a look at a recent post of his waxing nostalgic about the good old days before marital rape laws, when wives couldn’t say “no” to their husbands and expect the law to take this no any more seriously than a husband intent on rape.
In a second posting, he’s doubled down on the whole marital rape thing and incorporated into a vast and fantastical vision of the past and future of humankind that bears so little resemblance to reality that it’s worth quoting in detail as a sort of case study in Men Going Their Own Way delusions.
