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| How the hell did I get mixed up in all this? |
The manosphere is in an uproar about a public service TV ad from an anti-violence group that portrays a baby boy as a future rapist. Some MRAs are attempting to refute the ad’s implication that improperly socialized men are prone to violence by posting and upvoting … violent comments and veiled threats online. And apparently some non-veiled death threats as well.
A few days ago, you see, W.F. Price, head honcho at The Spearhead, wrote a critical piece about the endeavors of one Josh Jasper to draw attention to sexism in Super Bowl commercials; Price also pointed out that Jasper, CEO of the Riverview Center, a nonprofit serving domestic violence and sexual assault victims in Illinois and Iowa, had put out an earlier commercial that, in Price’s words, “impl[ied] that baby boys are all potential rapists.”
Despite the source, that’s actually a more or less accurate description of the ad, which depicts a happy little baby boy as a future rapist. I’m just not quite sure why that’s so objectionable; after all, every baby, male or female, is a bundle of possibilities, some good, some bad. (Hitler was once a happy, gurgling baby.) The point of the ad is that parents can have an effect on how their kids turn out; if you raise your son to be a violent, misogynist asshole, he may well end up a rapist.
As much as I agree with this basic sentiment, I’m not going to defend the ad. It’s terrible. Generally, I’m not a fan of using babies to make political points — it’s trite and manipulative, to begin with. And in this case, it’s worse than that: portraying a baby as a future rapist seems rather hamfisted, given that babies are often victims of abuse themselves.
Judge for yourself; here’s the ad.
All this said, the flaws of the “rapist baby” ad in no way excuse the response it’s gotten from some of the more hotheaded in the Men’s Rights Movement and the manosphere in general. On his website, Peter Nolan declares that the ad “promote[s] hatred of male babies”; on The Spearhead, Poester99 goes even further, accusing Riverview Center of “promoting violence against baby boys.” Which is, of course, completely absurd. (Even besides that, as Jasper has pointed out on his blog, the Riverview Center serves male victims as well as female ones.) It’s hard to know if the people spouting this nonsense honestly believe it, or if they are using the baby in the ad even more cynically and opportunistically than Jasper is.
Unfortunately, the MRA reaction has gone well beyond simple rhetorical overkill. A number of comments on The Spearhead, many of them with dozens of upvotes, are essentially threats — some vague, some not-so-vague — against Jasper himself. duke writes that:
Mangina creeps like Josh Jasper should suffer the same fate as Nazi sympathizers after WWII-taken out and shot after a five minute trial.
Avenger adds:
If men really were as violent as he claims they would have shut him up long ago. One good beating and this mangina would never open his mouth again.
Firepower, meanwhile, goes after Jasper’s … first name:
So long as males tolerate sissified males named “Josh” – pissing even on our SuperBowl – these gender traitors will only feel encouraged to increase their anti-male slurs.
Over on A Voice For Men, meanwhile, MRA elder Paul Elam insinuates that Jasper, far from being a sissy, is a violent “alpha puke” — and calls on his fans to dig up dirt on him:
This man deserves consequences for his actions.
Some history on Josh is known. We know he was a marine and we also know that he was a Los Angeles police officer. Two areas for sure where the capacity for violence is a plus. Add to that the fact that he was on a Domestic Violence task force and this bad apple starts to stink a little more. …
Anyone want to take any bets on whether this alpha puke ever busted heads as a cop, simply because he could? It leaves one to wonder – especially given the intellectual violence he is so obviously willing to inflict on male children – just what sort of skeletons are in this douche bag’s closet.
If they are there, I would love to get my hands on them and rattle them together for the world to hear.
And on Men-Factor, antifeminist blogger ScareCrow (who used to regularly post comments here) posts the email addresses of The Riverview Center’s mostly female board of directors, urging readers to “vent your anger” on this “bitch-hive,” adding “I aim to destroy it.”
I don’t have the patience or the stomach to sort through the comments on the YouTube page for the ad to see what other vile shit has been posted there.
I can only hope that most of this violent language is just standard internet tough guy talk, and won’t result in real violence in the real world. Even if you believe that Jasper’s ad commits a sort of rhetorical violence against male babies — which I think is a ridiculous reading of the admittedly idiotic ad — it does not justify actual violence against anybody.
EDIT: I should have let this one sit a little before putting it up. I’ve made various changes to strengthen and clarify my argument.
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>No problem. Also, the only people I've ever heard deny that men can be raped are men.To add a second instance to your personal experience: men can be raped. Obviously.This is why it is notable that men commit most rapes. If women could not rape this would not mean much.What it tells us is that something is going wrong with the way we raise our boys. The fact that rape has been declining in the last decades also tells us we are doing better.
>Hmm. That commerical was obnoxious. NO parent should be looking at their son or daughter and thinking, "Hmm I hope Jenny doesn't become a drug-addict" or, "I hope Johnny doesn't end up in prison for being a rapist". WTF? Parenting is hard enough without trying to see into the damned future. Hitler was an adorable baby, do you think his parents saw that shit coming? Frick! Allow a child to be a damned child and eff all of this crystal-ball crappola. I pity the children who actually grow up with their parents already treating them like damned criminals for "thought crimes". UGH!
>Please let's not spread misinformation about the fatalities. Child DEATHS and the FATALATIES I have always read, are at the hands of men more often, but this thread made me go brush up, and sure enough I found this:http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/fatality.cfm#perpsFrom this site:"Who Are the Perpetrators?No matter how the fatal abuse occurs, one fact of great concern is that the perpetrators are, by definition, individuals responsible for the care and supervision of their victims. In 2008, parents, acting alone or with another person, were responsible for 71.0 percent of child abuse or neglect fatalities. More than one-quarter (26.6 percent) of these fatalities were perpetrated by the mother acting alone. Child fatalities with unknown or missing perpetrator relationship data accounted for 17.3 percent of the total.There is no single profile of a perpetrator of fatal child abuse, although certain characteristics reappear in many studies. Frequently, the perpetrator is a young adult in his or her mid-20s, without a high school diploma, living at or below the poverty level, depressed, and who may have difficulty coping with stressful situations. In many instances, the perpetrator has experienced violence firsthand (Cavanagh, Dobash R. E.; Dobash, R. P.; 2007). Fathers and mothers' boyfriends are most often the perpetrators in abuse deaths; mothers are more often at fault in neglect fatalities.2"——————–So again, if you want to say women abuse children more, I don't even argue the point, don't look it up…I take it as a given. To me that makes logical sense. But I KNOW unless all the stats have recently changed that MEN kill the kids by and large, so knock it off. This is the same bait and switch jerks try to pull with the domestic violence issue and the shelters. The only reason SHELTERS were needed is due to MURDER, you know DEAD BODIES. And because the men would track down the women, then anywhere the women went they were jeopardizing whoever helped them. Also they needed a decent amount of help to leave the person they were dependent on, however, shelters cannot provide that much service. The stay is 30 days, and there is not much offered beyond a roof and some people to talk to. It will be interesting to see if men have to A) run for their lives…B) cannot run to family or friends because of being tracked down C) Cannot be financially independent of the partner. Again, shelters have secret locations, and in my town, even the police could not know where they were (their partners were in there, too), and the shelters to not provide the women with financial independence. Anyway, when it comes down to gauging the BRUTALITY and the DEATHS and the CONTROL and sense of entitlement to hunt someone down in perpetuity, men win hands down. Sorry MRAs that victim card you keep trying to play is getting trumped. Stop blaming feminists for all your personal failings.
>@ Captain BathrobeAre you so deranged that you think toddlers in diapers need training to stop them from raping someone?Random Brother
>Booboo: The info I've found suggests you are correct when it comes to the murder of young children. From an earlier post of mine:How about the particularly awful crime of child murder? Looking at all children under the age of five who were murdered from 1976-2005, we discover that 54% were killed by fathers or male acquaintances, and 29% by mothers. (Most of the rest were also killed by men.) Source: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/children.cfm
>Richard, Are you so deranged that you think Bathrobe thinks that toddlers in diapers need training to stop them from raping someone?
>Seriously richard, you can't seriously be missing the point that no one thinks the baby is going to rape anyone.The point is that the way we raise our children effects who they grow up to be. If we raise our boys to be aggressive, they will comitt more violent crimes.Richard, do you think men commit more violent crimes because they are inherently violent? That is pretty anti-man.
>But I KNOW unless all the stats have recently changed that MEN kill the kids by and large, so knock it off.I dunno, according to this:Fathers and mothers' boyfriends are most often the perpetrators in abuse deaths; mothers are more often at fault in neglect fatalities.it's hard to put much more blame on men. Killing a child via abuse is horrible, but a slow, miserable death via starvation or something is not really much better.It will be interesting to see if men have to A) run for their lives…B) cannot run to family or friends because of being tracked down C) Cannot be financially independent of the partner.I dunno, maybe some of the men shot or poisoned by their wives might have been able to make use of such services. I've also heard MRAs say that Erin Pizzey received death threats over her advocacy on behalf of abused men and women, though I'm not familiar with the source of that quote…perhaps they're making it up. Perhaps not, though. It may well be you folks aren't *quite* the victims you make yourselves out to be either, at least not much more than the MRAs.
>Thevagrantsvoice, that's where custody comes in. You cannot neglect a child to death if you are not the child's custodial parent.
>@ Sandy:Sandy said: "Richard, there is nothing about the way we are raising girls that makes them more likely to murder children. Women are more likely to kill their children only so far as they are more likely to be custodial parents. Remove that factor and they are not more likley to kill children."I'll need some evidence on that. Preferable from non feminists sources. Sandy said: "Men, on the other hand are more likely to rape, and more likely to murder."Men, not toddlers in diapers. Also, men are more likely to rape because of the way feminist have defined rape as pretty much any sex a woman doens't like. Sandy said: "Is this because they are inherently evil? No. Then it must be something we are doing wrong when we raise our boys."1. We who? Most criminals come from single mother backgrounds. So by extension single mothers raise criminals. How many PSA have you seen demanding women not be single mothers in order to help their sons not become a criminal and or rapist? 2. This has very little to do with helping boys, it is the elevation of women in all things. Another demand that we teach out boys to respect women without any regard to girls respecting boys or taking into account girls behavior in this supposedly deserved female respect. Sandy said: "This is actually a pro male message. It says that there is nothing inherent in maleness that makes men rape more, it is something they are being taught."No it is not a pro male message. It insinuates that all males even as small as new borns need training to stop them from becoming rapists. That the desire to rape is either so innate in men or so entrenched in society that men need training to control themselves is feminist bullshit. Random Brother
>@ ShaenonThe point is men are being told to redefine themselves to be better men FOR WOMEN'S BENEFIT. Women redefined themselves FOR THEIR OWN BENEFIT. Get the difference?Random Brother
>Richard, I posted a study above.
>Richard, also "we" means humanity, men and women. Also most criminals come from poverty, it is poverty that leads to crime, not having one parent, male or female.You are seeing this message in a certain way because you are extremely biased. It is saying we (men and women) are encouraging boys to be aggressive, not that they are inherently aggressive and need training to be otherwise. It is saying "stop encouraging boys to be aggressive."
>It insinuates that all males even as small as new borns need training to stop them from becoming rapists.I think this is true, but then again, I also think it's true that all females, including newborns, need training to stop them from becoming rapists (of children, or other women, or whoever) as well. Virtue must be assiduously ingrained into all children from their earliest youth–you won't find a surfeit of it in human nature.
>There shouldn't be a baby in the video because it is a cheap ploy at emotions.The point is that the baby is completely innocent, not inclined towards aggression towards anyone, and we should not fill his head with images of manliness that demand he be aggressive.
>(Note, the post above was in response to the comment "then there shouldn't be a baby in the video, should there?")
>@ DavidClearly Captain Bathrobe and you do think this baby is a menace or you'd have a problem with him being in the video. Clearly you 2 feminist "men" are so deranged that using a child for this end is okay as long at the child is male. Nothing is beneath a fucking filthy feminist. I guess I shouldn't expect much from a bunch of late term abortion loving, child abuse excusing (only for moms though) man hating feminist nutjobs and their lap dogs. Random Brother.
>I like this blog because the comedy continues in the comments.
>@ Sandy,Try and get a clue. If no one believes the child is a threat to rape, then there is no purpose for him being in the video. None. Zip. Nada. Feminuts are following the old, all males are potential rapists, even this little baby, which your kind has spewed millions of times. The same message about teaching people not to rape can be done without stooping to this level, but I guess for feminists it's not stooping at all.Random Brother
>Richard, maybe if we say this slower:the point is the child is innocent. Note the video even says "but he wasn't always this way." The shock is that an innocent child with no inclination towards aggression would grow up to be a rapist, because we teach him to be aggressive.The point of the baby is to tug at your heart strings, not to incite hatred towards male babies.
>@ Sandy1. I missed your post about the baby not being in the video.2. Please note that aggressiveness does not equal rapist. Boys tend to be aggressive and being aggressive is not a bad trait.3. The study combines fathers with step fathers which skews the numbers. Random Brother
>I know aggressive does not equal rapist, but that is the videos point. The author of the video believes that encouraging children to be aggressive, strong, etc. encourages a rapist mentality. Whether or not this is true, the point is:no one is saying male babies are dangerous or trying to incite hatred against them. In fact, the message is that more men are rapists because of the way they are raised, and we should do better by them.
>Also, if you look at the study it breaks down the numbers in numerous ways.
>(and also, more importantly, shows that feticide is usually do to psychosis, i.e. not societal messages about killing children).
>Fine, then. We'll do this a step at a time. The video begins with the following words: "He's tough. He's strong. He's aggressive. He's powerful. And he raped is girlfriend."All this does is tie traditionally masculine traits that are good with rape. None of those traits are negative. They are useful traits that when properly focused help soceity. But since feminist are against men having any power they hate the traits that give them power. " But he wasn't always this way."They then show baby. "What are you teaching your son? Redefine what it means to be a man. Because ending sexual violence begins with him."So, this baby at the outset is said to have grown up to become a rapist. What makes him a rapist? Well, apparently being strong, aggressive, powerful, and tough. But if we can go back in time and remove those traits, in essence making him pussy and redefining his manhood, well them women will be safe.And you think that's a good message. And "male" feminist like Dave and Captain Pink Bathrobe wonder why I think them lap dogs.Random Brother