Search Results for a voice for men
Videos to get you PUMPED. Also, a creepshaming manifesto from the Men’s Rights subreddit.
Today I feel an irresistible urge to post music videos. Above, an awesome interpretation of a rock classic that is sure to get you PUMPED for the weekend.
Below, enjoy the silky voice of Phil Collins.
CDC: MRA claims that “40% of rapists are women” are based on bad math and misuse of our data
Feminists often complain, with considerable justification, that Men’s Rights Activists try to turn every conversation about women’s issues into a game of “what about the men?” You’re talking about female rape victims — well, what about the male rape victims?
The trouble with this strategy, from the point of view of the Men’s Rights Activists anyway, is that this little “gotcha” is much less of a “gotcha” then they’d like it to be.
In the case of rape, for example, feminists are well aware that men are raped as well: the “Don’t Be That Guy” ad campaign, which sent so many MRAs into hysterics, focused on male victims as well as female ones. The emergency room rape advocate organization that a friend of mine volunteers for provides advocacy for victims regardless of gender.
So many MRAs have started playing another game: trying to twist the conversation around in order to cast women as the villains. Rape is a bit tough for them here, since the overwhelming majority of rapists are male. So MRAs talk about the alleged epidemic of female false accusers instead. Or they change the topic entirely and make dead baby jokes (see my post yesterday).
Recently, MRAs have tried a new strategy, seizing on data from The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, a massive study conducted in 2010 under the aegis of the Centers for Disease Control, to claim that “40% of rapists are women.”
Facebook: Page advocating murder of feminist blogger “doesn’t violate our community standard on bullying and harassment.”
Several months ago, you may recall, feminist activists got Facebook to agree to remove blatant sexist hate speech from its site — much to the chagrin of many Men’s Rights Activists, like Paul Elam of A Voice for Men, who declared, in a post filled with alarmist rhetoric, that “feminist ideologues are co-opting Facebook, and they will root out any and all opposition to their worldview.” AVFM’s John Hembling, meanwhile, denounced the feminist activists as “fascists.”
Ever since then, Men’s Rights activists have been playing a game of “gotcha” with Facebook, trying to prove that the hate-speech monitors there only care about misogynist hate speech, and don’t actually care about hate speech directed at men. Every few days, it seems, there is a new thread in the Men’s Rights subreddit purporting to document this alleged “double standard.”
Ten days ago, for example, a Men’s Rights Redditor called dizzy_j got nearly 400 upvotes for a post complaining that “I reported three anti-men Facebook pages for gender-based hate speech today. Only one was removed.” Six days ago, DerDietrich got 580 upvotes for submitting this supposed evidence of a double standard. Trouble is, you can’t actually prove a double standard with a handful of examples.
But I would like to suggest an alternate hypothesis, which also fits the anecdotal data provided thus far by the MRAs, and provide an additional piece of anecdotal evidence that supports my theory and undercuts theirs.
My hypothesis is that Facebook is shitty at recognizing and dealing with hate speech and harassment, no matter whom it’s aimed at.
My evidence for this? Well, yesterday bloggers at Skepchick noticed a Facebook page targeting a specific feminist/skeptic blogger and asking if she “should … be murdered.” The anonymous poster — who identified her by name and posted pictures of her on the page — coyly avoided a literal call for murder, writing instead:
We should not ever break the law. Rather, we should advocate , through lawful land constitutional processes, to have the law changed so that it is legal to kill [name redacted by DF]. Alternatively, we should, where legal, request that [name redacted by DF] kill herself. Relevant laws should be changed so that suicide, and advocating suicide, is legal.
The Skepchick bloggers reported the page to Facebook for its obvious violations of the site’s harassment policies.
And they received this reply from Facebook (I’ve covered up the blogger’s name):
I think it’s fair to say that if Facebook can’t recognize a page calling for the literal murder of someone as harassment there is something very wrong with its system for dealing with harassment and hate speech.
The page has since been taken down, though it’s not clear if it was removed by Facebook or by the original anonymous Facebooker.
Get your act together, Facebook.
“ManSlug is a vile subhuman thing” and other insights from the Men’s Rights subreddit
Feminism brings another manling into the fold
I’ve learned a lot about myself in the process of writing this blog. For example, this week, I learned that I’m a “vile, subhuman thing” who “like licking sh*t of feminist’s shoes” and “just wants every man cuckolded.” Also, I have some interesting and specific tastes in porn that even I was unaware of.
I learned all of these things from the always reliable purveyors of accurate and unbiased information in the Men’s Rights subreddit, in a thread ostensibly devoted to my coverage of the recent events in Toronto, but which ended up being more devoted to my various alleged failings and my alleged preferences in the porn realm.
Let’s take a look!
Here’s a man who is evidently also a pig suggesting that I am a man who is also a slug:
But ThePigmanAgain was too late! For I was able to steal EIGHTEEN WHOLE TRAFFICS from the Men’s Rights subreddit that day before the moderators removed this thread from the subreddit, lest any more unwary Men’s Rightsers wander into my evil internet lair where they might find writing critical of the men’s rights movement and its farcical attempts at activism.
Evidently Alisdair isn’t one of those who actually clicked on the link to my post in the thread, because he apparently believes that my post was a do-it-yourself guide to cuckolding other men, or perhaps a guide to getting cuckolded. I’m not sure..
And then there’s JayBopara, a MHRA warrior who seems a bit obsessed with what he for some reason believes are my preferences, porn-wise:
![JayBopara [S] -2 points 4 days ago (5|7) This guy David Futrelle like licking sh*t of feminist's shoes, so this sort of article was predictable. My understanding is he also likes mangina porn. This guy Futrelle is the pits, and the sad thing is, there are so many pathetic manginas exactly like him out there. With so many manginas, I doubt the MHRM will gain too much traction. But here's hoping. permalink source save give gold hide child comments [–]Dronelisk 2 points 3 days ago (6|4) ok fine no need to insult the author lest we fall into the same category as feminists and their ad hominem logical fallacies. wait did I just do that too? permalink source save parent give gold [–]JayBopara [S] 2 points 3 days ago (4|2) The reason I said those remarks was somewhere I read, and some places he posted he indicated a liking for mangina porn. Therefore I don't believe I've made an ad hominem attack. It appears from my research there is a link with people who are political manginas and those who like mangina pornography.](http://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/maginaporn1.png?w=604)
These comments of his raise a few questions for me.
1) Where exactly is he allegedly reading about my alleged preferences in porn? The MakeStuffUpAboutDavidFutrelleWiki?
2) What on earth is “mangina porn,” anyway?
Asked this very question in the thread itself, Jay has this answer:
![JayBopara [S] 2 points 3 days ago (2|0) Mangina porn = femdom porn. Sorry if you guys didn't understand that. Porn which often is not about sex, as it is about women debasing, humiliating and violently abusing men. Apparently manginas get off on this porn. Mangina porn has nothing to do with transexuals or anything like that. Man·gi·na -noun- 1. A women-firster. 2. A pussy-worshipper. 3. A male who behaves or acts toward men in an overly aggressive way once feminist Maxims are questioned.](http://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/manginaporn2.png?w=604)
Ah.
Dude, hate to break it to you, but I’m pretty sure that you’re the only person in the universe who calls that “mangina porn.”
Also, despite the similarities in the first three letters of the words, and the involvement of women in each, there is no real connection between “feminism” and “femdom.” One is a social and political movement; the other is a kink.
Anyway, this is how the HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT FOR MEN AND BOYS OF THE 21ST CENTURY deals with its critics.
Well, its male critics anyway. It treats its female critics much, much worse.
Men only commit crimes to make women happy, explains lady MRA
Woman: Always wanting men to buy them toasters — or steal them!
Sometimes posts by Men’s Rights Activists seem like transmissions from some alternate universe, a Bizarro world that bears a superficial resemblance to our own but where everything is backwards and upside down.
Take a recent post on A Voice for Men by FeMRA Diana Davison with the seemingly innocuous title “Women don’t own sex.” Ostensibly a response to a piece about rape in the Irish Times, the piece contains a series of bizarre assertions about relations between men and women that Davison apparently thinks she can use as proof that, despite all evidence to the contrary, it’s really women, not men, who run the world. And that men only commit crimes in order to make women happy.
Speaker at Men’s Rights RALLY OF THE CENTURY in Toronto calls on MRAs to take up arms against “communism”
Dean Esmay rallies the troops in Toronto
So, it finally happened. The men’s rights lecture and rally in Toronto that A Voice for Men have been breathlessly promoting for weeks — in no less than 17 separate posts — have both come to pass. Men’s Rights celebrities flew in from across the continent to attend the exciting events. Paul Elam was there! So was Karen Straughan! Even Dan Perrins made an appearance! (Oh, wait, I think he lives around there.)
In a post-rally post, AVFM’s Robert O’Hara declared the “Historic MHRA rally in Toronto” to have been a “huge success.”
Well, you can be the judge of that. Go here to watch some actual footage of the event. (Sorry, I can’t get it to embed here.) So far I’ve only watched the final 8-minute video at the top of the page, but it’s pretty revealing in and of itself. The event organizers almost outnumber the sparse crowd. And one of the speakers calls for MRAs to take up arms against their “communist” opponents. No, really, just watch.
In case the video gets pulled, or censored, I’ve taken the liberty of transcribing his remarks: :
There’s an organization out there called communism, and the communist manifesto says that the first thing they have to do is take over power. And they’ll never get elected. And they know that they’ll never get elected. So what they do is they say “we have to take power by violent methods,” right, so if you want to crack back against these people, I hate to say it, but you’ve gotta be prepared to pick up a gun and put down the books.
Emphasis mine.
Someone in the audience responds to this with a hearty “yep!” There’s a smattering of applause, mixed with boos. AVFM’s Dean Esmay hurridly ushers the speaker away from the microphone.
The speaker who follows Esmay — I didn’t catch his name — describes the counterprotesters (who held their own rally nearby) as being of “the hammer and sickle” and denigrates them as “queers.”
This isn’t so much history being made as history repeating itself. I suspect the rhetoric was similar at a lot of White Citizen Council rallies in the sixties.
Oh, and the HISTORIC LECTURE that so many MRAs were hoping and dreaming that feminists would disrupt? Feminists ignored it. Apparently, according to one MRA on Reddit who claimed to have been there, a little more than a hundred people showed up.
Congratulations, A Voice for Men, on your FLAWLESS VICTORY!
I’ll watch as much of the rest of the rally as I can force myself to sit through, and add anything else worth adding.
EDITED TO ADD: I watched the video that covered the rest of the rally. It was pretty uneventful: a low energy, sparsely attended rally with a bunch of half-assed speeches. Apparently no one at A Voice for Men or CAFE, the co-host of the rally, bothered to prepare anything to say — perhaps because they were all expecting some sort of feminist riot? The “pick up a gun” speaker wasn’t one of the scheduled speakers, just someone they gave the microphone to when he raised his hand after the scheduled speakers were done.
One moment that did stand out: a trans man — apparently a member of CAFE — briefly took the mic, taking offense at the chants from the counterprotestors calling MRA’s “anti-gay.” I would suggest he take a look at AVFM’s not-so-proud history of homophobia and transphobia.
EDITED TO ADD AGAIN: Here’s a picture of the event from Civilian Media. You can almost taste the excitement! From left, Nick Reading of Men’s Rights Edmonton, Dean Esmay of AVFM, the legendary Paul Elam (looking a little bewildered), and two other dudes. Paul evidently HEARTS Fucking Their Shit Up. Oh, Paul, we HEART U!
Nick Reading of Men’s Rights Edmonton: “If they didn’t scream [no], how else would I get an erection?”
Nick Reading: Men’s Rights rape joker
So a helpful Twitterer told me that I was a frequent topic of conversation on A Voice for Men’s Honey Badger “radio” show last night — that’s the one hosted by Karen Straughan (Girl Writes What) and Alison Tieman (Typhon Blue) and a newer addition to AVFM’s FeMRA stable named Della Burton. Bored, I went over to take a listen to the archived show. Well, bits and pieces of it, anyway. Life is short, and every minute of this show felt about an hour long.
Anyway, I missed most of whatever it was they said about me, but I did manage to force myself to sit through a good chunk of the segment featuring none other than Nick Reading, the guy who’s running a joke campaign for city council of Edmonton Alberta as the “Patriarchy Party” candidate. You know, the dude we talked about just yesterday.
The gals did their best to play along with his over-the-top patriarchal schtick, proclaiming themselves submissive inferior females unworthy of his manly phallus, and so on. It was as gratingly unfunny as you might imagine, and it went on and on. Even the Honey Badgers, perhaps wondering if this whole segment wasn’t a rather apt metaphor for their own role within A Voice for Men and the Men’s Rights movement at large, couldn’t quite bring themselves to laugh at any of Nick’s, er, humor.
At least not until, about 49 minutes into the show, he brought out the rape jokes.
Take a listen:
Paul “The Thought of Fucking Your Shit Up Gives Me an Erection” Elam, meet Nick “If They Didn’t Scream No, How Else Would I Get an Erection” Reading.
In case you weren’t able to make all that out, due to the clear-as-mud sound engineering job of AVFM’s James Huff — you may remember him as the guy responsible for this amazing rant — I have transcribed the exchange below as best I could, cutting out a few repeated phrases and ignoring some remarks that got buried under other remarks.
Nick Reading: No never means no. It only means yes. That’s an understanding that we have within the patriarchy.
Karen Straughan: It is.
Alison Tieman: That’s true. Actually “no” should be stricken from the English language because it simply makes no sense. How could any woman ever say no to the holy phallus unless she was criminally insane?
Nick: Criminally insane, yes.
Della Burton [?]: Criminally, yes.
Karen: But, but we shouldn’t strike “no” from all the dictionaries and the lexicons of language simply because there are numerous times in the course of a day when a man loves to say “no” to a woman.
Nick: I would almost insist on striking it from the non-male vernacular but if they didn’t scream it, how else would I get an erection?
[Awkward pause]
[Laughter]
Della [?]: Oh my goodness.
Karen: Right, you’re right.
Della: I hadn’t even thought of that.
Karen: So no is still in.
A Voice for Men: Promoting Human Rights, One Rape Joke at a Time
EDITED TO ADD: Below, a video on YouTube about this episode of Honey Badger radio, which not only looks at the show itself but at what was going on in the official chatroom for the show at the time, which turns out to be even creepier than the stuff said by Nick Reading on the show itself.
Along with the standard MRA misogyny from some of AVFM’s regulars, there were bizarre sexualized comments directed at the so-called Honey Badgers themselves: one commenter went on at length about how he wanted to use Karen Straughan’s breast milk in his coffee (and spike her coffee with his semen). Palani provides screenshots and everything. Some of her commentary is a bit problematic — she refers to them as “retards” at one point — but if you’ve got 15 minutes it’s worth a watch.
[VIDEO REMOVED BY REQUEST OF VIDEOMAKER]
Meet the Patriarchy Party, the latest bid for media attention from Men’s Rights Edmonton
From the Patriarchy Party’s actual pamphlet. Yes, the name of the party is almost impossible to read. I don’t think that’s on purpose.
I sometimes say that the only “activism” that the Men’s Rights Movement is any good at is harassing individual women. But perhaps I’m being a bit too stingy here: following on the heels of the Father’s Rights activists who dress up like superheroes and climb up buildings and bridges to show that, well, I’m not sure what they’re trying to show, Men’s Rightsers seem to be developing a knack for poorly conceived media stunts that make them look like idiots.
The latest incredibly poorly conceived Men’s Rights media stunt come from Men’s Rights Edmonton, the A Voice for Men sister brother group famous for, among other things, chasing women down the street in the middle of the night and claiming that the women they chased were the bullies.
Anyway, the loudest and most obnoxious dude in the group, Nick Reading (a.k.a. “Eric Duckman”) has decided to run for Edmonton City Council on — get this! — the Patriarchy Party ticket! Oh no he didn’t!
Oh, yes he did. I suppose that the Patriarchy Party’s supposed platform — including a pledge “to end antiquated laws regarding women’s sexual consent” and provisions to instruct teachers “to snatch things like toy trucks out of the hands of little girls and replace them with dolls or tea sets” — probably inspired a chuckle or two amongst the folks at A Voice for Men, but the trollery here is really too inane to offend.
Whetever, dudes. You can find their badly designed pamphlet, with traced-photo “artwork” presumably by the noted FeMRA artist TyphonBlue, here.
“Pregnancy is No Excuse For Misandry” and other pithy, baffling slogans from the Men’s Rights propaganda squad
A real Mens Rights poster from deviantART
Pity the poor Men’s Rights activists. The real civil rights movements that MRAs like to compare their, er, “struggle” to may have faced many obstacles that MRAs haven’t — from legal prohibitions on voting to fire bombings and assassinations — but at least they haven’t had a hard time explaining just what it was, and is, that they’re seeking redress for.
When Martin Luther King so famously dreamt of a world in which “my four little children will … not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” he was not only speaking eloquently; he was expressing an idea that was, well, pretty easy to understand.
The Cartoon Artistry of Victor Zen, Men’s Human Rights Activist Human
I think I have a new favorite MRA. Sorry, this one’s an MHRA, because he spends all his time hanging out on A Voice for Human Men. (Oh, it’s still just A Voice for Men? Then Why did they put that H for “Human” in that other acronym?)
Anyway, his name is Victor Zen. And according to Victor’s MHRA Resume — and yes he really does have one — he is quite an awesome MHRA, I mean, just consider these accomplishments:
AVFM Forum Moderator (4/7/2013-7/1/2013)
- Enforced AVFM policy in the AVFM forums
- Maintained unity in MHRA community
- Encouraged peaceful online activism
I mean, it totally sounds like he was one kickass AVFM policy-enforcing, MHRA-unity-maintaining, peaceful online activism encouraging moderator for nearly three months!
If I were hiring any MHRAs, I would definitely put Victor Zen’s MHResume (see what I did there) at the top of the virtual pile.
Oh, but that’s not all! Since then, Victor has been doing a bang-up job as AVFM Backup System Administrator, which I assume means he system administrates the hell out of AVFM whenever it backs itself into a corner, which it sort of does pretty much all of the time. (I think. I’m not really up on these sorts of technical things.)
But that’s not the part of Victor’s MHResume I want to celebrate today. For if you scroll down to the bottom you will find a list of his real accomplishments:
- First day as MHRA: December 5th, 2012
- Posters designed: 8
- Videos produced: 38
- Cartoons drawn: 18
- Articles written: 27
- YT Subscribers: 120+
Woah, woah, what’s that about cartoons?
That’s right, he drew EIGHTEEN MOTHERFUCKING CARTOONS. Not eight. Not eighty. EIGHTEEN.
That cartoon at the top of this post. That’s just a taste of just ONE of these EIGHTEEN cartoons.
You can can see the loving craftmanship — sorry, craftsMANship — he brings to the task.
Let’s take a look at the rest of them, which have been helpfully posted for us in a bunch of AVFM forum threads and on his own site. Be prepared for some violence and maybe a teensy bit of hate, because the TRUTH IS NOT PRETTY. Also, neither is his terrible drawing style.
Also, one of the cartoons features a talking vagina.
Here you can see the ironic conclusion to the story started in the two frames above, as well as an assortment of other cartoons posted under the heading Victor.Zen On Absurdity via Inequality.
And here is Victor.Zen On the MHRA’s Enemy.
And Victor.Zen On the Screech of Feminism.
And wait there’s more!
Victor has posted some of his favorites on his own site as well. (He starts with the vagina one; apparently he’s quite proud of his passing familiarity with that sexual organ.)
He’s got posters, too.
As well as an explanation for why the word “mangina” is totally not misogynistic, just like a simple descriptive term with no misogynistic overtones that means a dude who’s, you know, a “philogynic misandrist.”
A Phil a who now?
