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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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>Just put it as a .zip or .rar on Megaupload or something. People violate copyrights all the time (posting .zip files of scanned books, comics, etc) and the MU people usually don't care enough to take such things down. If they do, just re-upload it. It's not really very hard.
>Should I manage to obtain the magazine, I will have no trouble keeping the scan in circulation among MRAs. However, I fully expect that when/if a link is added to the list, feminists will contact the source of that link and tell them that copyright is being violated, at which point the link will become broken and then David will declare the list to be "spam".
>Reupload it on mediafire or wherever, then–every time they take it down, it'll take you less than a minute to put it back up.Still, though, even if you did provide the scans, there's still the question of whether or not they were doctored with photoshop or some other editing program…you could easily score more points for your cause by producing fake scans, after all. It seems like a pretty obvious strategy for anyone who doesn't mind being dishonest.
>Well I do mind being dishonest, but I suppose there's no way I can really prove that to you and I'm not going to whine about it. Anyone with an actual copy that that magazine can verify the accuracy of the scan, but I doubt that there are very many copies of that magazine that aren't in a landfill by now. Perhaps the truth was lost for eternity.**That was an Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth reference.
>@ Sandy, 2/11/11:"Pwlsax, I don't get it. All eight are human traits."Yes, but my 4 are less wedded to a certain male body type (which not all males possess). They're more about character than big muscles or instinct. They're also harder to spin negatively than the 4 listed in the ad. I hope they give boys good ideals to shoot for whether or not they're going to be huge warriors.
>Cold, I love that you're worked out this whole complicated thing about who it would be pointless to try to verify the quote because of copryright, I'd say it didn't count, bla bla bla. I did ONE search on Google, and, ta da! Mystery solved. First, the entry on the book in Wikipedia notes that quote in question is that of a character, but that's it's often attributed to her. Following the rape of Val's daughter Chris, Val states (over Mira's protests), "Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relationships with men, in their relationships with women, all men are rapists, and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes" (p. 433). Critics have sometimes quoted Val's dialogue as evidence of French's misandry without noting that the passage is only spoken by one of many characters in the novel.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Women%27s_RoomI also found, yes, the actual People magazine article in question. It's from Feb 20 1979, not from Feb 20, 1983 as claimed. http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20070233,00.htmlIt does quote that line, but in a misleading way that does suggest she said it herself. In the article, French notes that the book is partly based on her experience, and that the character who utters the line has some of her personality in her. The character utters the line after her daughter is raped; French's daughter was also raped. After that happened, French told People: "Sometimes I felt so violent about it and how the courts treated her," French admits, "that there seemed no recourse but to go out, buy a gun and shoot the kid who did it, and the lawyers too. I couldn't help my own child." Plenty of that rage made its way into The Women's Room. "I'm less angry now. Being too deep in anger corrodes your interior."In other words, the quote in question is supposed to reflect the rage a character felt shortly after her daughter was raped, a rage French herself felt in the same situation; it is not a ideological statement of misandry; moreover, she's specifically saying that such anger is not healthy in the long run. So yeah, in the future these sorts of things will have to have sources if you want to post them here.
>I'm well-aware of the use of that line in her novel, but obviously I was rather lazy in not checking to see if People had a publicly available archive going that far back. Still, I can't help but think that if an MRA whose son was falsely convicted of rape were to say the following, it would be the subject of a scornful post here in which you would call him an misogynist:Sometimes I felt so violent about it and how the courts treated him that there seemed no recourse but to go out, buy a gun and shoot the girl who did it, and the lawyers too. I couldn't help my own child.I have no problem whatsoever with the sourcing requirement; unsourced claims annoy me at least as much as they annoy you. That's precisely why I am working on a better list of quotes. Since you dug up the link to the People article, would you like some honorable mention as a contributor?
>So you know that the quote is from her novel, and is not a statement of her beliefs, and you're STILL going to use it in your list of quotes? If so, that's really pretty dishonest. Also, I like that when you quote her now, you leave out the part about her not being so angry now, and realizing that anger is corrosive. And, no, I don't want to be mentioned as a contributor.
>Before reading the People Magazine source I didn't know if it was quoting from her novel or if she also said it in her own words. Again, it's not unheard of for an novelist *cough* Rand *cough* to use a fictional character as a personal mouthpiece and to also say some of the same things in their own words. Now that I know that the magazine simply took that from the book I won't be using that quote, but I'm pretty sure the author of that list just made an honest mistake. I may make use of the shooting quote from the same article, however, to illustrate the double standard between how men and women are treated when they express rage that way.Are you saying that if a man said that he wanted to shoot is son's false accuser and the lawyers, but doesn't anymore because he realized the anger is corrosive, then he would be exempt form any scorn? I also find it ironic that you complain about me leaving that part out when you quoted Paul Elam speculating about Josh Jasper being an abusive police officer and left out the part where he says:What you come up with needs to be verifiable. I don’t want to commit a civil offense against him, no matter how deserving he is.
>Cold-no one would have a problem with a man who expressed that kind of sentiment since he is expressing something that is an understandable anger over his son being harmed by a system that is not supposed to harm him but did. And best of all, he would have gained something from the experience…learned that anger should never been kept as it does nothing to help and much to harm.Duh
>Do women who are raped also gain something from the experience?
>Cold, when someone is the victim of a violent crime, or close to someone who has been the victim of a violent crime, they frequently feel and express rage. Sometimes they fantasize about violence. I really have no problem if someone in this situation honestly says, yes, in this particular circumstance I felt this sort of murderous rage, but I realize that this rage is corrosive and I should move beyond it. And in some cases it's understandable if this rage persists. Do I blame Fred Goldman for still hating OJ? No I don't. Have you seen the documentary Dear Zachary? I don't want to reveal too many of the details of it, because it's better for viewers to go into it without knowing the details, but at one point in the film a father angrily says he wished he had killed the woman who killed his son. I think almost anyone watching the documentary would find this sentiment completely justified. I certainly did. I'm pretty sure the author of that list just made an honest mistake.I don't share that belief. I also don't think you made an "honest mistake" in posting that list. You posted that list knowing that many of the alleged quotes in it were unsourced; you clearly didn't bother to check if any of them were in fact, to borrow the language of Mr. Elam here, verifiable.
>Yes they do Cold.
>Excuse me? Every single quote in that list is sourced, they just aren't hyperlinked because it's an old list from the 90s, back when there wasn't nearly as much information available online as there is today. Again it's outdated, that's why some of us are working on a better one. I checked as many of the quotes as I could and gave the author the benefit of the doubt on the ones where I couldn't obtain the source. As you have proven, however, the source DOES check out and its text DOES give the impression at first glance that Marilyn French said this in her own words. That's why I think it was an honest mistake on the part of the author.I do find your selectivity in when rage is and is not understandable to be rather biased. It has been several years since I lost my capacity to feel strong emotion, but I remember the rage that I felt when I found how stacked the deck was against me on account of my gender and you constantly mock MRAs for expressing that.
>Yes they do Cold.Well in that case why don't we make rapists exempt from prosecution the same way we do for women who falsely accuse men of rape? After all, they are just doing women a favor by building their character, right?NOTE: The above is sarcstic.
>This has probably already been said, but I'll repeat it anyways. the problem with this add is the line "redefine what it means to be a man"… What does the current definition of being a man (including the attributes given at the start of the ad) have to do with rape? unless it's being suggested that the current definition of being a man includes being a rapist…and as most men are adamantly against rape, that is an unfair accusation. The implication of this ad is that your son is going to grow up to be a rapist unless you teach him not to. But why is this? the only way this could be true is if rape was an inherent part of the male instinct, an instinct that needs to be suppressed and controlled or else he will break into a sexual rampage.
>I really was hoping you wouldn’t go there, Cold, into that whole “men are like Jews in Nazi Germany and feminists are Nazis and should be executed” drivel, but it’s clear now I was giving you too much credit. So now that you have gone there – okay, why not, I’ll play.Jews were a historically oppressed group in Europe – like women. While some men were oppressed by virtue of their socio-economic status, what Jews and women had in common was that they were oppressed across ALL socio-economic strata. Both Jews and women spent thousands of years living under severe legal and civil disabilities; they could not own property, didn’t have access to courts, were barred from universities and public and political life. Deprived of civil rights, Jews lived at the mercy of the local feudal lord. Some lords were benevolent and protected “their” Jews from harm. But plenty of lords used the threat of pogroms (and indeed, pogroms themselves), to take advantage of Jews or to satisfy their own bloodlust. That’s not too dissimilar from women’s dependency on their fathers and husbands – and just like Jews had virtually no recourse under the law against abusive lords or neighbors, so women had virtually no recourse under the law against abusive male relatives. Oh, and if that wasn’t enough of a parallel for you, it would interest you to know that one of the most enduring themes in antisemitism involves emasculating Jewish men by claiming them to be effeminate and week; medieval propaganda went as far as to insinuate that Jewish men menstruate. And how amusing it is that even today, to call someone “such a Jew” or “such a woman” both still make sense as insults (as opposed to “such a Christian” or “such a man”).cont'd below
>continued from aboveWhen legal restrictions on Jews were lifted in the 19th century , some people got their longjohns all in a wad over the fact that Jews were going to “take over” the entire society and pollute university scholarship and political discourse with their alien “Jewish” thinking – very similar to how your ilk claim that the supposed “vast differences” between men’s and women’s thinking make women dangerous to the academia and politics, and women should therefore be shut out of public life. Antisemites claimed simultaneously, that Jews were crafty and intelligent enough to take over the world, but incompetent and unqualified to occupy important and well-paid positions. The fact that these claims were mutually exclusive never dawned on them – just like it never dawns on you and your ilk that the claims of women taking over the world and at the same time, women being dumb broads with three brain cells are mutually exclusive. Despite the fact that Germans in the late 19th and early 20th century thoroughly dominated politics, the academia and business, and that most Jews were actually small-time tradesmen barely making ends meet, every Jewish scholar, politician, businessman, professional or artist was seen as “evidence” of supposed Jewish encroachment on things that should belong exclusively to “real” Germans. This is very much the way that MRA’s treat women’s participation in public life, politics, the academia and the arts.Then there was the Blood Libel – you know, spurious claims that Jews constantly schemed to torture and kill Gentiles because fuck Gentiles. Promoters of this horrendous accusation went so far as to fabricate a text in which Jews supposedly discuss how they are going to take over the world and hurt Gentiles in various ways. You know, not unlike you MRA’s claim that feminists are all in a plot to kill and maim men because fuck men, using fiction and staged photos as “evidence”.
>continued from aboveAnd as for that pre-Holocaust propaganda: the Nazis accused Jews of planning to exterminate “real” Germans and of living at “real” Germans’ expense. Jews were accused of making Germany lose World War I and of overconsuming public resources. The Final Solution was sold as an act of self-defense against perfidious Jews who had to be struck first, before “real” Germans all perished. This bears more similarity to MRA propaganda against women, than to feminist claims against the patriarchy. In this propaganda, hardcore antisemites were joined by “soft” antisemites who claimed they liked Jewish comedians and ruggelach, and that they were on the side of Jews, as long as Jews acted as nature intended: remaining perpetual victims and objects of history, their existence contingent on the benevolence of their Gentile masters. Soft antisemites are similar to “good” MRA’s who claim they “respect” women, as long as women remain in their “natural” place as lackeys and accessories to men. (Incidentally: treating a group of people as objects of history, who exist solely “for” someone else, to be acted upon and never to act – that’s what the term “objectification” really means. It doesn’t mean looking at someone’s boobs with lust or wanting to marry a doctor. In other words, the complaint about women supposedly treating men as “success objects” is drivel because it misconstrues the very concept of objectification. If anything, women who see themselves as having vicarious value by virtue of being married to successful men, are objectifying themselves – but certainly not their husbands. End of digression.)concluded below
>concluded from aboveDuring this period, if a Jew killed a Gentile, this was held up as “evidence” of the supposed Jewish campaign of murdering Christians. If a Gentile went on a rampage killing Jews, this was portrayed as, at worst, an understandable reaction to “oppression” by Jews. You know, this reminds me of MRA’s who laud Marc Lepine as a revolutionary and George Sodini as a “hero”.So it seems to me, women have more in common with Jews and MRA’s with Nazi’s than vice versa, and that women are in greater danger of extermination than men. History clearly isn’t on the side of your argument, Cold.Disclaimer: I am not claiming that I live in Nazi Germany, and I, unlike Cold, don’t have fantasies of a violent gender war. Rather, the above was meant solely to elucidate the obvious fact that Cold’s claim to the effect that men today live like Jews in Nazi German is full of shit. As I said before: a crude and self-serving (ahem) hyperbole, that’s insulting to victims of Nazism.
>@Kratch: "The implication of this ad is that your son is going to grow up to be a rapist unless you teach him not to. But why is this? the only way this could be true is if rape was an inherent part of the male instinct, an instinct that needs to be suppressed and controlled or else he will break into a sexual rampage."I don't know, Kratch, MRA's have been talking out of both sides of their mouths on that one. On the one hand, men supposedly "can't stop" from penetrating a woman once they see a bit of cleavage, on the other hand, how dare anyone suggest that men are dumb animals with poor impulse control. On the one hand, sex for men is a "need" that must be fulfilled at all costs, on the other, men have intellect and willpower (unlike women, presumably). On the one hand, rape is a "natural" response to seeing an attractive woman, on the other, don't you dare presume that men are natural rapists. On the one hand, rape is about sex (and violence is just a tool, not the purpose), and on the other, how dare you presume that most men are rapists, even though most men are very much into sex. On the one hand, a female rape victim is always somehow responsible for her own rape because she failed to divine the true nature of her attacker before it was too late, and on the other OMG, women who presume that all men are rapists until proven otherwise are detestable man-haters, OMG!! So which is it?
>That was such an amusingly bad and blinkered comparison that I have copied the whole thing to share with other MRAs as we have a good laugh about it. You should change your name from Amused to Amusing.
>Cold: Every single quote in that list is sourcedNo they aren't. They list who allegedly said each quote, but they don't always say when or where, making many of the quotes basically impossible to fact check. If I posted this quote:"I eat my boogers." –ColdThat would not be a properly sourced quote, even though I gave your name. It would be impossible for anyone to determine whether or not I was quoting you accurately. Anyone assembling a list of quotes by Cold would be wrong to include it. Many of the quotes on the list are similarly impossible to fact check, which again makes it clear to me that you have not seriously tried to fact check the list. I've just gone through the list in detail. A number of quotes are simply imaginary, a few are taken completely out of context and are wildly misleading (they don't actually reflect the views of the person being quoted), some are from people who may not actually be feminists, many of them are impossible to track down at all. I will post a detailed rundown sometime in the next couple of days. You've said at least once that you checked out a bunch of these quotes. Aside from the Hillary Clinton one, which ones did you check out?
>Cold, I forgot to address this:I checked as many of the quotes as I could and gave the author the benefit of the doubt on the ones where I couldn't obtain the source. That is basically the complete opposite of what it means to fact check something. When you can't verify something, you are supposed to NOT PUBLISH it.
>You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I run the site that hosts that list or had something to do with its creation. Neither is the case. It should go without saying that if I was satisfied with that list as a complete compendium of feminist bigotry then I wouldn't be contributing my effort to developed a new list now, would I?I checked the quotes from Andrea Dworkin, Hillary Clinton, Robin Morgan, and Catherine Comins. The quote attributed to Comins is actually an extrapolation of her words, but it is an accurate one and can be read here.